


I Fear No Fate

by remiges



Series: Fly By Night [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Career Ending Injuries, Depression, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 10:07:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12056730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remiges/pseuds/remiges
Summary: Judging by the clock, it must be bright out. Blue skies, maybe. Sunshine. The migraine curtains block it all out, like the world outside the bedroom doesn't exist, or if it does, it doesn't exist for him.Sid goes back to sleep.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [ this lovely poem](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49493/i-carry-your-heart-with-mei-carry-it-in) by e. e. cummings. If you're looking for a poem to set the tone for this piece, I highly recommend reading ["Oh Please, Let It Be Lightning"](http://fieldofficeagency.com/office/oh-please) by Ada Limón.
> 
> Where the Other Losers Live takes place from summer/fall of 2013 to early 2014. 
> 
> **Additional warning** for blackout sex, discussed and in the past.

**SIDNEY CROSBY BACK OUT WITH CONCUSSION [EPSN] December 6, 2008**

"Our number one priority is the health of our players."

***

The days pass in a blur of darkness and stale sweat. Sid doesn't want to eat anything, both because he doesn't want to throw up any more and because his head feels like it's drifting a couple of inches above his neck. There's a migraine hovering right on the edge of consciousness, and waiting for the pain to start is exhausting.

He sits at the edge of his bed, feet on the floor, and contemplates getting dressed. He has to stand up, then find his clothes, then put them on. But no, he still has to take a shower, so there's another round of tasks that get broken down smaller and smaller.

Go to the bathroom. Turn on the water. Take off his clothes. Get in the shower. Adjust the temperature. Get his shampoo out. Lather. Rinse. And on and on and on.

The thought is heavy, weighted. It's like the gravity of the room has increased significantly. Unbearably.

Judging by the clock, it must be bright out. Blue skies, maybe. Sunshine. The migraine curtains block it all out, like the world outside the bedroom doesn't exist, or if it does, it doesn't exist for him.

Sid goes back to sleep.

***

**CAPITALS CLAIM THEIR FIRST STANLEY CUP [Washington Post] June 12, 2009**

Thirty-four years after their inception, the Capitals bring home the Stanley Cup, shutting out the Detroit Red Wings in Game 7.

***

The Caps win the cup, and Ovechkin takes it for a lap, almost drops it, face bright enough to light up the entire arena. At least, that's what Sid hears. He can't watch the game, wouldn't even if he was cleared to look at screens.

***

**THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON CONCUSSIONS [Deadspin] October 24, 2009**

Let's talk Sidney Crosby.

***

There's a white noise in Sid's head when he thinks about retiring, kind of like being in a wind tunnel. He tries to grasp it, but the thought is too large to get his mind around. He's got his doctor's advice, and his team to consider, but it all comes down to him. To stay or go. Fight or admit defeat. Whether he can pick himself back up, one final time.

And he can't, is what it comes down to. He isn't strong enough to bear it—not the thought that he might die on the ice, that feels more like destiny—but the idea that he might get hit again and end up back in that pit, still alive in the aftermath. He can endure a lot—bag skates and bruisers and the taunting crowds—but he can't endure the thought of his bedroom with the migraine curtains down, the hopeless slog, the bile and the sweat and the endless drowning days.

He should have been someone. He was _going_ to be someone. Now all that he has left are pucks for goals he made and won't ever again, a list of post-concussion symptoms, and the memory of being so close to the Cup he could almost _taste_ it...

He tries to tell himself it was worth it.

***

**SIDNEY CROSBY ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT [ESPN] January 18, 2010**

After an extensive battle with head injuries, Sidney Crosby announced in a press release that he is retiring.

***

Sid watches the hand on the fuel gauge inch closer and closer to empty, but no matter how hard he tries, he can't get himself to pull over.

All he has to do is put on his turn signal and take the off-ramp, find a gas station, and fill up. He's done it a million times. He can go anywhere after that, the possibilities unraveling under his tires, and all he needs is gas.

He can't, though. It doesn't make any sense, and it's completely irrational, but he can't get off the highway. He's going to run out of gas in the lane, just sputter to a stop from the inertia. And people always think of inertia as being immobile, not having the energy to move, but it goes the other way too. Sid's in motion, and no matter what the logical part of him is telling him to do, he can't stop. Not until something stops him.

He grinds to a halt fifteen minutes later.

He'd held out through spring, then summer. And then two weeks after his birthday, something snapped. He'd thought he could stay in Pittsburgh, but that was a mistake. He's got a couple of changes of clothes in his bag, and some other stuff that he'd grabbed on autopilot. He can't even remember if he'd taken his toothbrush.

He calls roadside assistance with this rising sense of hilarity surrounding him. It's like everything is funny, suddenly—his irrationality, the empty tank, the skates in his bag. Him. He's pulled over on the side of the road, cars passing, tires straddling the rumble strip, and it's all so funny he could cry.

"My car just stopped," Sid tells the person on the other end of the line, like he doesn't have any idea why. Like he isn't the _reason_ why. "I need a tow."

He sits in the car, snickering to himself helplessly as he waits. Every time he thinks he's done laughing, something sets him off again. He bites the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood, but it doesn't help.

He's not sure how much time passes before the tow truck shows up, its yellow light spinning on top. Sid doesn't know why he's so surprised to see a woman get out of the cab, and the burst of shame that thought provokes is enough to tamp down his hysteria.

"Hi," he says as he gets out, and his voice almost sounds normal. "Thank you."

He signs the paperwork without reading it, and tries to pay attention to what the woman is saying, but he keeps getting distracted by the cars blowing past them.

"Look," the woman tells him. "I'll take you in to the nearest garage, they'll be able to work on it tomorrow. Do you have someone you can call, someone you can stay with?" Sid thinks of his teammates, who he's been ignoring for months, and shakes his head. It's not like he's in Pennsylvania, anyway.

"Alright," she continues. "The town's nothing special, but it's got a motel you can stay at that's not too far from the garage. I figure you're good on money."

Sid hadn't thought she'd recognized him, but he guesses that's the way his luck is going. If she asks for an autograph or tries talking about his career, he thinks he might just start walking down the side of the highway until the cops pick him up or he can't go any further.

"Well, come on," she says instead. "Hop in."

He should just tell her he ran out of gas, he thinks as he climbs up into the passenger's seat. It's dumb, but it's surely not the dumbest thing someone's ever done. He's just making more work for her, towing a car that can easily be fixed.

But having to go to the nearest gas station and then back—and where's he supposed to put the gas? Does she have a can? Would they have to unhook his car and leave it here?—suddenly seems insurmountable. He'll see whatever town she's taking him to, and spend the night, and then be on his way. Even the thought seems daunting, but he'll have to manage somehow. That's what he keeps telling himself, anyway.

The ride and the conversation passes in a blur, and then Sid's standing in the middle of a motel room, key in his hand, duffle bag on the bed. He's not quite sure how he got here, but it doesn't matter.

He looks out the window, and across from the motel there's a bar. The neon sign in the window is flickering, and one of the letters has gone out, and the place looks like a dump, but Sid doesn't care. He needs a drink.

***

**PENGUINS DEFEAT DEVILS, 6-3 [Sportsnet] October 11, 2010**

Despite a shaky start, the Penguins came back strong in the third.

***

Flower won't stop calling, but Sid can't bring himself to pick up.

He thinks about his parents' expectations, then tries not to think about that anymore. His mother had said she just wanted him happy, but they'd sacrificed so much for his career, for the tools to get him started. To not do something that recognizes that fact seems unbearably selfish.

But still. It's his life, isn't it? If he can't do hockey, maybe he doesn't have to. Maybe he can stay, he thinks. He's found someone to fuck to get out of his own head, and there have only been a couple of reporters so far. It's been two months, and the town still seems to think hockey is something that comes on the TV if you get the right channels, and not a way of life. And surely that's enough.

He buys a house at the end of town, and keeps ignoring his phone, and tells himself that all it takes is time.

***

**THE MORE THE MERRIER: INSIDE THE PENGUINS' FAMILY SKATE [The Buzz] December 20, 2010**

Sign up for a free 1-week subscription to The Buzz. Unlimited articles! Personalized news alerts! All your hockey needs in one place!

***

The moon is out, bright and almost full. There are some clouds making their way across the sky, but it's peaceful out there, under the wide expanse of space. Sid steps onto the pond and skates a carful circle, just testing out the ice.

It's exhilarating, like he can feel his blood pumping for the first time since he retired. He skates laps, slowly at first, but then picking up speed. When he laughs, it feels pulled out of him, this riotous burst of sound against the stillness of the night. But also—

If he can skate, shouldn't he have stayed? Shouldn't he still be playing? Doesn't this mean he's made a mistake?

Sid closes his eyes and tries to savor the ice and the crisp air. He pushes the thoughts back, as hard as he can. And then he opens his eyes, and it's like the world's in spin. He can't find a stationary point to focus on for a long second, and then the dizziness hits for real.

He's on his knees, the bite of pain sharp, as sharp as the cold burning his palms. He goes to get up, but his skate blade skids, and he can't tell if he's spinning or if the world is. He tries again, and makes it halfway up before he's back down.

The moon stares, mocking, and Sid curls his fingers into the unyielding press of the ice. This time, he doesn't try getting back up.

He'd had this thought, so small he'd never actually voiced it in case it got crushed by the surrounding atmosphere. The thought went like this: maybe. Maybe if he just called this a break, maybe if he worked hard, maybe if he didn't let the world get to him like it had last time, maybe he could come back. People came out of retirement all the time, and if he kept in shape, maybe he could too. Maybe.

Maybe. How fucking stupid. How naïve, how _detestable_. Like desire was all it took to fight everything else back, like it mattered how good of shape his body was in when it was his useless brain that wasn't working. How childish. How blind.

He doesn't cry, but he also can't feel his face. He doesn't know how long he's been lying here on the ice, waiting for something to pull him back up, but he's the one who has to do it, no matter how impossible that seems.

There's some fair thing at the library that Claude had been talking about, but Sid hasn't seen him in months. He'd been going to go, but now just the thought is enough to make his stomach turn. He's still numb, but he knows that's going to wear off sometime. Sometime soon, he thinks, and he can't go back to the house that he'd signed for. He can't go back to whatever life he's been building here, small and cloistered and safe as it was.

Lying on the ice, he realizes how stupid he's been. It's over, isn't it? Sidney Crosby, face of the NHL, is no more. All that's left is this useless lump who can't even skate in a straight line anymore.

Sid's helplessness tips over into a crystalline sort of rage. He sits up and starts fumbling with his laces, yanking at the knot like something's possessing him. By the time he gets a skate off, he's panting.

He holds the skate for one long moment, weighting it, his lips stretched back, and then he throws it as hard as he can. It hits the ice with a clatter that seems too quiet, and he starts ripping at the other one, trying to get his foot out before he's untightened the laces enough.

This one he wings, no finesse, and it topples over a couple of feet from the other skate. He's so angry he's shaking with it. How dare— How  
_dare—_

His rage roils in him, this seething mass that feels thick enough to choke on, and he closes his eyes as tightly as he can until starbursts of color flicker behind them. How dare he be so stupid, and how dare the universe deal him this hand, and how dare _everything—_

It doesn't last, though. When he opens his eyes after an eternity, he's still on the ice. It feels like he's used up all of his emotions, like there's nothing left in its place. His skates are black lumps in the monochromatic scale of the night, and Sid's feet hurt from the cold seeping through his socks, and there's a headache blooming behind his eyes. He feels numb, and not just because of the chill. All he wants to do is go home, but he doesn't know where home is, anymore.

He finally gets to his feet, shuffles carefully off the pond, and leaves his skates where they'd landed. It's not like he'll ever need them again. Not like it matters, anyway. In the light of his kitchen, he can see the blood on his finger from where he'd torn a nail trying to get the laces undone, but the pain hadn't even registered.

He packs a bag in a daze, burning through the last of his energy. He gets some clothes together and leaves the food in the fridge, doesn't even lock the door behind him. Everything he needs gets thrown into the back of his SUV, and he sits in the drive for one long minute before turning the key and starting the engine.

It's early morning or late night, depending on how you look at it, and all Sid knows is that he can't stay here, not now. Not with the pond out back mocking him, his failure sitting heavy in his chest.

He doesn't think he's coming back.

***

**IF YOU CAN PLAY… NATHAN SIMARD BECOMES FIRST OUT NHL PLAYER [Yahoo Sports] February 21, 2011**

In a press conference held on Monday, Nathan Simard became the first out player in the NHL. The veteran Minnesota Wild forward told reporters, "Coming to terms with—

  


**NHL ANNOUNCES CHANGE TO CONCUSSION GUIDELINES [Associated Press] June 27, 2011**

After facing increased scrutiny following the early retirement of—

  


**PENGUINS KNOCKED OUT OF THE PLAYOFFS [Sportsnet] April 22, 2012**

Despite a hat trick by Evgeni Malkin, the Penguins couldn't recover from—

  


**SIDNEY CROSBY RETURNS TO HOCKEY (CLINICS, THAT IS) [The Chronicle Herald] July 19, 2012**

"It's good to get on the ice and give back," the former—

  


**COULD SAM MYERS BE THE NEXT OVECHKIN? [The Columbus Dispatch] November 8, 2012**

The diminutive forward is tearing up the ice—

  


**PENGUINS WIN IN SHOOTOUT AGAINST—**

  


**PENGUINS LOSE 5-2 TO TAMPA B—**

  


**PENGUINS TO TRADE—**

  


**PENGUINS—**

  


**PE—**

***

He watches another team hoist the cup, and another one, and gets drunk, and buys a plant, and breaks all his plates, and slices open his finger cleaning them up the next morning, and tries three different therapists, never for longer than two sessions, and goes home, and leaves home, and tries to make a home, and signs autographs, and listens to people talk about him behind his back, and signs more autographs, and avoids the press, and comes out just to have it over and done with.

He stops drinking, and starts drinking again, and tries to take up golf, and actually takes up woodworking, and gets a library card, and checks out history books and cookbooks, and cries himself to sleep, and repairs things with some of his teammates, and visits children's hospitals and nursing homes, and tries eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and fails at eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and gets a new phone, and takes an online college class, and watches his sister play hockey, and tries to figure out the future.

And he comes back. And comes back. And comes back.

It's not something that he plans, really, but every time autumn comes rolling in he finds himself in that town. He'd never sold the house he'd bought, and anyway, it's beautiful there in the fall. He leaves before the pond can freeze over, and doesn't wonder too often if his skates are down at the bottom, algae turning the laces green. He's got other things to think about.


	2. Chapter 2

One minute Sid's asking Claude to leave with him, and the next thing he knows it's April, the hockey clinic is over, and Sid's at the bar with their drinks in some dump in Arizona while Claude rides the mechanical bull.

"Come on," Claude says, laughing, when he slides onto the stool next to Sid. "Give you a dollar if you ride it." His cheeks are flushed, and there's a spark in his eye that Sid has missed.

"How about no," he says.

"Two dollars," Claude tells him, draining the last of his beer. Sid's the one driving, so he'd stuck to one and then switched to water. He pushes his glass at Claude.

"Still no," he says, and Claude smirks at him.

"I bet I could make it worth your while," Claude says, running his finger around the rim of the glass.

"Nope," Sid says, but he figures that's their cue to get going. Claude's walking steadily enough, but Sid puts a hand on his back as he steers him out of the bar, just to be touching him.

Claude gets handsy in the car, running his fingers across the inseam of Sid's jeans as he's driving. "You're going to make me crash," Sid warns him, but Claude just moves his hand to Sid's knee instead of taking it off entirely.

"It's not my fault you're easily distracted," he says, and when Sid looks over his eyes are dark and heated. Sid can feel himself blush hot even in the cool of the night.

***

They go to the Grand Canyon and the largest ball of twine, which is apparently different than the largest ball of string. They visit the Spam Museum, and Claude cracks himself up in front of the doors that look like giant pigs.

Sid comes very close to leaving Claude on the side of the road in South Dakota. Claude forbids Mexican food if they're going to be in the same car. They get kicked out of a club in Wyoming for public indecency, and both of them maintain it was the other's fault.

All in all, it's shaping up to be a pretty good roadtrip.

***

The Pens make it to the third round in the playoffs. They've got good odds, Sid knows. Even though he spends most of his time avoiding hockey news, there are some things that just stick, like he's picking them up by osmosis somehow.

Claude's out with one of his friends who lives in the area, so Sid goes to the store to try and escape his thoughts, but it doesn't help. He walks the flickering aisles, buys a cake from the sale rack in the bakery section when he remembers what the date is, and finally ends up back at the hotel.

It's been years since he's seen his teammates, not counting the games he'd watched on TV, or rather, the snippets. There's something burning in him now though, like all the forgetting he tried to do was just a cover. Four years gone, nearly four and a half, is too much time for him to still feel like this. He knows that, but somehow that doesn't change the reality of the situation.

He's jarred out of his thoughts by the clatter of the door unlocking, and then Claude appears, shucking his windbreaker and tossing it onto the bed.

"Hey," he says, then catches sight of Sid's impulse-buy. "What's the cake for? Special occasion?"

"Not really. It's an anniversary, but not a big one," Sid says, shrugging. He'd forgotten the plates to eat it off of, and he thinks there's something else as well, he just can't put his finger on what. "It's been three years and nine months since we first met."

Claude thinks about that. "More like three years and seven months," he says, kicking off his shoes and sitting down on the bed. "I mean, if you want to be really accurate."

Sid frowns. "I think you're counting wrong."

"No," Claude says. "I remember, because it was October and you had that giant scarecrow up in the yard. Scared the shit out of me the first time I walked by it in the dark."

"That was the second time," Sid says. "The first time was in that little motel down the street because I didn't have the house yet, I'd just stopped for the night because I ran out of gas."

There's a long pause. Then, "What?" Claude looks incredibly confused. "At you sure it was me?"

"Yes, you bitched about your knee when we were fucking and told me to sign up for a library card if I was sticking around. You really don't remember?"

"Huh," Claude says. "Well, I did used to drink more back then. It's not like I've never gotten blackout drunk and ended up somewhere I didn't remember going." He looks a little disturbed, but nowhere as much as Sid thinks he should be.

Sid feels vaguely nauseous. "How can you be so blasé about this?"

"Hey, it's not a big deal or anything," Claude says when he catches a glimpse of Sid's expression. He looks surprised, somehow, like he doesn't understand why Sid is so freaked out about Claude not _remembering having sex while drunk_.

"You couldn't consent," he says blankly. "If you were that drunk. And I—"

"Stop it," Claude says. He looks annoyed now. "If I was talking to you about library cards, I obviously wasn't that drunk. And it's not a big deal. I'm kind of a slut anyways, so."

"Don't call yourself that," Sid says on autopilot. His thoughts are running in circles, heavy and clawed. What kind of person does that make him, the kind of person who has sex with someone who's too drunk to remember it in the morning?

"Come on, it's true." Claude sprawls across the bed and wiggles his toes, good mood somehow restored. "I bet I've had more sex than you've scored goals."

He grins at Sid like this is all some big joke, and Sid feels like the pressure on his chest is squeezing his heart. Claude's smiles fades when Sid doesn't joke back.

"You're really upset about this," he says, sitting back up. "Sid, it's okay. It doesn't matter."

"It does matter," Sid says, standing up. He can't stay still for another minute longer, nervous energy running through his body. He starts pacing, the space between the wall and the door too short and somehow growing smaller. He's got a slideshow running behind his eyes of faceless men doing god-knows-what to Claude while he's too drunk to say no.

Claude's watching him from the bed, looking helpless. "I don't know what you want me to say, it's not a big deal to me. Is it kind of unnerving? Yes. But I've never been great at making good decisions."

Sid shakes his head and keeps pacing.

"Look," Claude says. "This would have been August, right? And we met at the bar? How drunk were _you_? I know hooking up with strangers isn't your usual MO."

Sid had actually had to leave his keys with the bartender, even though his car was in the garage so it wasn't like he was going anywhere. He and Claude had been leaning against each other laughing about something, Sid can't remember what now, when they'd crossed the street. They'd fucked against the wall in his room, too amped up to make it horizontal or do anything fancy, and passed out in bed after that. Sid had woken up around noon and gone to retrieve his keys, and by the time he'd gotten back, Claude was gone.

He spares a second to think about how disorienting that must have been for Claude, alone in a strange room and missing his clothes.

"It doesn't matter," he says. "That doesn't make it better."

"Sid." Claude's suddenly in front of him, caging him in with his body. "Stop. Just stop."

Sid stands there, back to the hotel door, and tries to pull himself together. He doesn't know how the night got out of control so fast. The cake he'd gotten is still sitting on the desk, icing smooshed on one side. Spoons, he remembers suddenly. That's what he'd forgotten, the spoons.

Claude's standing patiently in front of him, enough space that Sid doesn't feel trapped, but close enough that he can't keep wearing a hole in the carpet. "I don't like thinking about you getting hurt," he forces out, and hates how that sounds like he's making this all about him.

"I'm not. I didn't. I'm okay, you're okay, everything's fine. I don't drink like that anymore," Claude says, softer. He cups the back of Sid's neck, the only point of contact between them. "I need you to believe me on this, okay?" he asks. His eyes are somber.

Sid shakes his head, mute.

"You're not in charge of my bad decisions, Sid," Claude says, tightening his grip.

"I know." Sid reaches out and cups Claude's cheek. He can feel his stubble, the soft skin under his eye. "But I'm in charge of my own, okay?"

They stand there like that for a minute, each of them with a hand on the other. Sid catches a glimpse of them in the mirror on the wall, standing like they're trying to make some sort of bridge with their bodies.

"I'm sorry for freaking out," he says, even though that's not the full truth.

"You've had to deal with me freaking out about Marlene, like, ten times more," Claude says, and shrugs. He drops his hand, and Sid follows suit a second later. "But seriously. We were both drunk, no one got hurt. Stop trying to be a martyr about this. Now," he says, obviously trying to lighten the tone, "come sit down. I'm not waiting two months to eat that cake."

Sid takes a deep breath. He could keep pushing this, but he knows Claude doesn't want him to and it's just going to make him upset. If Claude doesn't want to keep talking about this, Sid can let it drop. He can.

"Fine," he says, and nods sharply.

The atmosphere is still a little weird, but they manage. Claude ends up cutting the cake with dental floss, which is something Sid never would have thought of, and they cram their slices in the individually wrapped cups they find in the bathroom. They have to use their fingers to eat it, and it makes a terrible mess, but there's something thrilling about the decadence of it all—licking chocolate icing off your fingers while in bed. It's strangely incongruous with their conversation and the rollercoaster of Sid's emotions, but he guesses life's like that sometimes.

Sid can't seem to find the words that are going to break the silence, and Claude's the one who finally does it for him.

"I guess that explains why you were so careful with my knee that first time. Second time, whatever." He tries a smile out on Sid, like he's not sure if Sid's going to fly off the handle again. "Hey, does this mean we have separate dates for our anniversary?"

"No," Sid says. "If my anniversary present is two months earlier than yours, that'll just give you more time to plan. And we didn't start actually dating until…" he tries to do the calculations in his head and can't.

"You don't actually know, do you." Claude looks delighted. He tips his head back and drops another piece of cake in, and Sid watches a couple of crumbs fall to the bed. "That huge fight about dating, and you don't know when our anniversary is," he says around the food in his mouth.

"That's not true," Sid protests.

"Yeah?" Claude grins. He's got a bit of chocolate stuck on a tooth. "Bet you twenty bucks you can't tell me the date."

"That would require you knowing it," Sid says, and he's pretty sure Claude doesn't.

"I do! Because I'm a good boyfriend. I wrote it down."

Sid stares at him for a minute, and Claude stares back. Then the corner of his mouth starts twitching.

"You did not," Sid says, kicking him over the covers.

"It's two days after the winter festival," Claude tells him, laughing. He grabs his cup before it can topple over on the bed. "I'll be able to figure it out. Your face, though."

They finish off most of the chocolate cake and Claude flips through the channels until he finds some dumb show about storage units, and it's almost like they're back to normal.

After they get ready for bed and turn out the light, Claude curls up close to him, closer than he normally does. Claude isn't a big fan of cuddling while they sleep, but now he's tucked up behind Sid with his nose pressed against Sid's hairline.

"You okay?" Claude asks, quiet and so close Sid can feel his breath. It's something he's learned about Claude, that if he wants to get him to talk, it's better not to be looking at him when he does. Claude likes dark spaces and conversations in the car where Sid's attention is on the road, like not being seen gives him some measure of control.

"Yeah," Sid says. "I'm sorry for making this all about me. It just scares me, thinking about you like that. That I could have done something you didn't want."

"Well," Claude says, "it's a big deal. I understand that. It's just a bigger deal to you than it is me, and maybe that's wrong or whatever, but it's my life." He shrugs, then tucks his cold hands under Sid's shirt. Sid can feel Claude's smile pressed into his shoulder when Sid flinches away from them.

"Just stop playing martyr for me, okay?" Claude asks.

"Okay," Sid says, and lets the promise sit between them in the dark until sleep drags him down.

***

They eat the remaining pieces of cake for breakfast and listen to the pipes gurgling in the room next to them. The nice thing about being on an aimless road trip is that nothing is set in stone, so schedules don't really matter. They could go anywhere, just the two of them, and see anything they wanted to see.

Of course, when they haven't figured out where they want to go next, that also means quiet days full of doing nothing.

"Hey, I saw a dock down the road when we were driving in. Want to walk down there with me?" Claude asks, and Sid agrees. He swipes his phone off the desk, and they walk in companionable silence.

The dock isn't much, just weather-worn boards set not far above the water. There's a group of Canadian geese watching them from the grass, and Claude gives them a wide berth. He wraps an arm around Sid's waist and sticks his hand in Sid's pocket as they're standing there, and Sid tries not to smile.

"It's pretty, isn't it?" he says. The lake isn't huge, but he can see a couple of small boats out on the water. "Do you think they're catching anything?" he asks before suddenly Claude's got his hand out of Sid's pocket and is shoving him forward off the dock. The cold hits him like a physical thing, sucking the air out of his lungs, and he surfaces with a gasp to find Claude bend double, cackling.

"You—" he starts, feeling his pockets for his phone, still treading water, and Claude shakes something gray at him, grinning. "You planned this," Sid says, spitting out part of the lake as a small wave overtakes him.

"You were standing so close to the edge," Claude says, still laughing. "I mean, what did you expect me to do?"

By this time, Sid's managed to pull himself up onto the dock. Claude takes one look at him and starts backing up.

"Do _not_ —" Claude says, dodging as Sid grabs for him. "My wallet, our phones—"

"Better drop them, then," Sid says, and Claude tosses them on the grass by the geese before making a break for it. It's not exactly a fair fight, since he knows Claude doesn't want to move too fast and hurt his knee, but he doesn't let that stop him. He drags Claude towards the end of the dock, Claude laughing all the while. When he goes to push him in, Claude drags him along.

The water is just as cold the second time Sid hits it, maybe even more, and he gets some up his nose. By the time he's blinked his vision clear, Claude's bobbing next to him. He can just see the top half of Claude's face, the rest covered up by the water, but his eyes are crinkling like he's smiling. Then Sid dunks him.

"Okay, okay," Claude gasps when he resurfaces. "You win. Jesus, I think my balls just crawled back inside. C'mon, out."

Sid helps him back onto the dock and tries to get the water out of his hair. His eyebrows are dripping, and he doesn't want to know what's in the lake.

"I'm fucking freezing," Claude says, teeth chattering. He strips off his shirt and starts wringing it out.

"Well, it wasn't my idea to go swimming," Sid tells him.

They do the walk of shame back to the hotel, and the first thing Claude does when he's in their room is go turn on the shower. Sid peels himself out of his clothes, the fabric heavy and clinging. He leaves them in a pile on the bathroom floor, then joins Claude under the showerhead.

Claude reaches for him, and his hands are cold against Sid's skin, a contrast made starker by the hot water. He runs his fingers across Sid's sparse chest hair, presses him against the wall, and kisses him. Sid doesn't like how the tile feels against his back, cold and a little slimy, so he repositions them as best he can.

It's too small in the shower for the both of them, really, but Sid tucks himself behind Claude and traces the jut of his hip bones. He rubs himself between Claude's thighs, bumping Claude's balls as he does, and Claude sighs and leans back into him.

It takes a while for Sid to come, but the water stays hot. Claude's languidly stroking himself off and doesn't seem to mind. By the time Claude's close, they're pressed chest to chest, Sid mouthing at the clean-nothing taste of his skin. Claude bites his shoulder when he comes, and Sid keeps him upright as he shakes through it.

When they're dressed again and the air conditioner has been turned down, Claude gets his laptop out for his skype session with Danny and the boys. When Sid starts to leave the room to give them privacy, Claude drags him into the frame.

Danny's got a new job helping out in the mailroom at a college, and Claude and the boys have too many in-jokes for Sid to fully follow their conversation, and Sid likes it. He likes getting to know the Brieres, even if they all laugh at him when Claude tells the story of pushing him off the dock.

Claude signs off after promising to send Danny pictures of the Native American mounds they'd visited a couple states back, and he just sits there for a minute after closing the laptop. Sid can tell his mind is somewhere else, far away from their hotel room.

"What do think you're going to end up doing?" Claude asks, lying down across the bed. His hair is still wet, and Sid cards his fingers through it while he thinks.

"I didn't really have a backup plan for after the NHL," he says. "And I haven't really settled into anything yet, I've just been doing different things."

"You can still skate, right?" Claude says. "I mean, I saw you on the ice helping out at that clinic. You could coach, or something."

Sid sighs and scoots down the bed so he can lie next to Claude. "I know. I'm just not sure if that's what I want to do forever. I mean I love it, but…"

"You can love something and still be drained by it. You don't have to coach if you don't want to. It's a big world," Claude shrugs. "I'm sure you can find something that'll make you happy."

"Yeah," Sid says. Then, "How about you?" Claude's been talking about going back to school, but he doesn't know for what. Being around him running circles in his life is enough to give anyone anxiety. Still, Sid almost feels envious of him for not knowing, in a strange way. Sid had figured out what _he_ was supposed to do with his life. It's just that he can't do that, anymore.

"I don't know. What do you think I should do?" Claude asks, twisting towards him.

"What do you _want_ to do?" Sid says.

"I don't know." He's watching Sid's face like he'll find the answer there. "I've already got two years of college, but I've been out of school for years. I'm used to working. I mean, not now, obviously, but in general. And I don't know what I even want to do, which would help."

"Do you think you'd regret it, if you didn't go?" Sid asks. And he knows he's not Claude, that they have different dreams and different reactions, but the urge to draw the parallel between Claude leaving college and Sid leaving the league feels close to overwhelming. Sid beats it down as best he can.

"Maybe," Claude says, and sits up. "I don't know what to do. Of course, maybe I don't even get in somewhere, and I don't know how I'll pay for it. I don't know if anything would be better, even if I did go. Even with online classes, or part-time, it's all just…" He waves his hands around, like it's too much to put into words.

"You'll figure it out," Sid says, sitting up as well. He scoots closer to Claude and wraps an arm around his shoulders, feels him relax into his side. "And if you don't, you can keep trying until you do."

"That's the thing," Claude says. "What if I don't? What if I'm just stuck ping-ponging around my life and I never figure it out?"

"Well, then I guess that makes two of us," Sid says. He shrugs when Claude looks at him. "What? It's true. You don't see me with my life figured out, do you?"

"Yeah, but you're… you," Claude says, and Sid doesn't know how to take that. "You've done something with your life," Claude clarifies. "I'm a nobody."

Claude's a little rough around the edges, but he's not a nobody. He's smart, and good with children, and likes obscure French authors and YA books and poetry. He's prickly and devastating and impossible to be summed up.

"Not to me," Sid says, because it's that simple. "Not to everyone who knows you. We don't all have to be famous to matter, Claude. Don't sell yourself short."

"You're better than any motivational calendar," Claude says, but he kisses Sid after he says it, chaste and sweet. "Thanks," he says, low, and Sid squeezes his shoulder in answer.

They watch a movie that night, something with superheroes in it. Claude spends most of the time mocking the terrible dialogue and impossible blood spatters, and when the superhero's evil twin appears, Sid's already laughing so hard he thinks he's going to pee himself. When it's time for bed, they stretch out on their separate sides, and Sid teases Claude about needing reading glasses when he squints at his book. Claude gets up in the middle of the night to unplug the refrigerator so it stops making noise, and when he gets back in bed he sticks his cold feet against Sid's calves.

It's so stupidly domestic that Sid's heart hurts.

***

Time passes, and suddenly the Pens are tied 3-3 against the Kings, one game away from the Cup. And Sid wants them to win—he's not small enough to wish away the dream his team has held for so long. Twelve years, the commercials keep saying. Twelve years since the last time Pittsburgh brought home the Cup, and Sid wants that for them. He does.

It's just, he'd wanted it for himself more. That probably makes him a bad person, but it's not like Sid can turn it off.

Claude's watching TV, and he hears him flip past the commentators getting ready for Game 7. It's nice of Claude to be concerned for him, but also condescending in a weird way, like Sid can't take the reminder of this Final when he's survived the knowledge—even watched—the last couple.

Of course, none of those had the possibility that the Pens would win, but still.

"Put it on," he says, and Claude looks at him for a minute before changing the channel back. The Pens are warming up on the ice, and the lights are flickering in their familiar pattern. Sid pretends it doesn't hurt to see, and drags the desk chair over to sit in, grips the armrests and waits for the puck to drop.

He watches the game with his heart in his throat, beating away under the surface of his skin. He can feel the muscle memory as his team plays: the knowledge of what the ice feels like, and the weight of the puck on his stick, and what he'd be doing if he was there.

They're tied 1-1 going into the third, and then Kuni gets a filthy goal, and then the Kings are pulling their goalie, and then the clock runs out and there are people jumping the boards, helmets and gloves and sticks on the ice as the stands erupt.

The triumph blows through him, and then just as quickly, it's gone. He reaches for it, how he's supposed to feel, but it's not there. Sid watches his team hoist the Stanley Cup, Geno picking it up, the C on his chest, and for one blinding minute all he can feel is jealousy.

It's like before it was all conjecture, that maybe he could have gotten one, that maybe he could have led his team there, or maybe they just wouldn't have been enough. That's the way life works, sometimes. Maybe Sid never would have lifted the Cup, because hockey is a team sport and not an individual one.

But now, with the Pens carrying the Cup around the ice, it's real in a way that it hadn't been before. If Sid could have just hung on, if he hadn't been such an idiot, if he hadn't—

—the _Cup_. The _Stanley Cup_. And he's sitting in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere, and his team is lifting the Cup, and Sid shouldn't _be_ here. _Can't_ be here right now.

"I'm going for a walk," Sid tells Claude, and doesn't stop to listen to what he's saying before he's out the door.

He doesn't have his wallet or his keys, or even the keycard to get back into the room, he realizes, but by then he's already crossed the median. Someone honks and Sid waves, ducks his head down further. He needs space, but everything around him is fast food joints and lights and motion.

He remembers the nature trail he and Claude had been on—god, yesterday? it all seemed so far away—and jogs across the divided highway when there's a lull.

Claude finds him sitting on a bench sometime later, Sid doesn't know how much. He perches against the podium across from Sid that has a sun-faded map encased under the plastic.

"Feel like a walk?" Sid asks, voice rough.

"No, I was just checking up on you," Claude says, and Sid isn't used to that kind of honesty from him.

They sit in silence for a while, the sounds of traffic filtering in through the trees. Sid doesn't know how Claude knew where to look, but he can't bring himself to ask. It's not like there were all that many places for him to go, anyway.

"Who got the Conn Smythe?" Sid asks, and it shouldn't feel like this, like there's something pointy inside of him, gouging against his insides.

"Don't know. I turned it off," Claude says gently, like Sid is something fragile. Like he can't take even a hint of his past life.

They stay there, like they're caught in some sort of tableau, and the night air presses heavier and heavier on Sid. He doesn't know how he's still upright when it feels like he should be compressed down past the point of recognition.

"I should have… tried harder," Sid says, pressing his palms into his eyes. He has to get this out or else it's going to strangle him. "I should have taken more time off so it didn't get that bad to begin with. I should have been stronger, not just… quit. And then none of this would have happened."

"I don't believe that," Claude says, quietly. "No matter how hard you tried. You've told me how bad it was, and I've read what the doctors said. You don't owe the world anything, especially not your health. You've given enough."

"But I wanted to give more!" Sid snaps. His eyes are burning, and he can't look at Claude. "Everyone who said I couldn't make it, that everyone was tying their hopes to something that was always going to fail, they're right. What did I really do? I wanted it all. I was going to be the best."

His voice breaks on the last word, and he hunches forward. He knows how this makes him sound, like a spoiled child. Like he doesn't appreciate everything he's been given, everything he's gotten to do. Hell, compared to Claude's life, his has been a bushel of roses.

"Hey, hey," Claude says, and Sid can feel the bench shift as he sits down next to him. "Hey, shh."

Sid shakes his head. He'd give anything to be somewhere else, somewhere the endless sky can't touch him. He'd take Claude with him, though he has to be uncomfortable. Sid can feel Claude rubbing a hand up and down his back, but it's not a confident motion. Claude always keeps everything bottled up. It's not a surprise he doesn't know how to do this, Sid thinks, and feels so ashamed of himself at the thought that he curls in on himself some more.

"You were captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins," Claude says. "And you touched so many people. You did a lot, okay? You are a lot, even if you're not still playing."

"But I should have—" his breath hitches, and he can't do this now. He can't. "I should—" Claude's hand has disappeared, and for one minute Sid feels this complicated surge of relief that Claude will just leave him like this to lick his wound in private, and fear that he's being abandoned.

"Sid," Claude says, and his voice is coming from lower than before. Sid looks up to see him kneeling in front of where Sid is sitting. Claude wraps his hands around Sid's wrists, but doesn't drag them down. "I know. I know you tried as hard as you could, but sometimes these things just happen. It's not your fault."

"How can you know that?" Sid chokes out. "How could you possibly know that?"

"I know you," Claude says, like Sid is some sort of irrevocable truth. "I know what kind of person you are. Even if you've changed, some things don't."

"It's so selfish," he says, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. He doesn't have any dignity left, he figures. Like a child crying over spilt milk, spilt ambitions. Like hockey is something that matters, more than a game, more than people who have really had and lost.

Claude just shrugs. "Selfish is human nature. It mattered to you," he says, rubbing his thumbs across the bones in Sid's wrists. It's not the most encouraging thing he could have said, but it's not a platitude, and for that Sid is grateful.

He doesn't know how long they stay like that, Claude on the ground because Sid can't pull himself together, but finally he gets his breathing under control.

"Get up," Sid sighs. He's still got snot all over his hand, so he tries to wipe it off on his pants before he gives Claude a hand up. Claude's pants have damp spots from the afternoon's rain, and Sid spares a thought for his bad knee. He feels ashamed of himself for breaking down like that, over something that's years gone.

Sid breaks the silence. "I'm—"

"Don't," Claude cuts him off. "Don't say you're sorry."

"But—"

"Please," he says, and that makes Sid stop, because Claude never begs. "Please don't. You did all your grieving, and then it turned out what you were mourning wasn't dead in the first place."

That's one way to put it, Sid thinks. Like this ball of self-loathing and jealousy is some zombie part of him that he just can't bury, that won't stay dead.

"Alright," he says softly.

They backtrack through the nature trail toward the road, the trees cloaked in shadows, Claude keeping pace at his side.

***

Sid wakes up the next morning to the sound of the door closing and the scent coffee wafting through the room.

"I was going to do breakfast, but I figure we already have more than enough crumbs in the bed as it is," Claude tells him, kicking off his sandals. He sets the coffee cups on the side table and starts pulling sugar packets out of his pockets. "They were out of creamer, sorry. Don't know what kind of hotel runs out of creamer," he mutters, and nudges Sid over so he can take his place in bed.

"You don't have to do this," Sid says, trying to sit up as Claude pulls the covers back up over both of them. He feels embarrassed by how he'd acted last night, the memory sharp and cutting. He'd thought he was done second-guessing the choice he'd made to retire, if he even could have _made_ a different choice, and it stings to have all of his insecurities laid bare like that.

"Sure," Claude says, passing him a coffee. "How many sugar packets do you want?"

"Really," Sid insists. Claude sighs and dumps the sugar packets in his lap.

"Let me do nice things for you," he says. "Come on, let me help."

Sid fiddles with a loose thread on the blanket before nodding. He doctors up his coffee and presses his shoulder against Claude's. "Thanks."

"Are you going to call them?" Claude asks after a minute.

"Yeah," Sid says, without pretending he doesn't know what Claude's talking about. He really should call, but the thought feels overwhelming. He fiddles with the empty sugar packets until Claude takes his cup and sets it on the side table.

"You're going to give yourself indigestion if you put it off," Claude says, kicking him under the covers. "Out, go do it right now."

"I could just leave you here, you know," Sid grumbles, but he gets out of bed anyway.

"Yeah, okay," Claude says, catching his hand briefly. "I'll keep your spot warm."

Sid nods and grabs his phone. He goes outside, back to the nature trail, but he steers clear of the bench he'd been sitting on. He follows the path till he finds a picnic table, takes his phone out, and finds Flower's contact information.

Sid's hands feel sweaty, and he almost puts the entire thing off. He could send a congratulatory text—that would be normal. It'd get his point across, he wouldn't have to talk to anyone, and it's what they've been doing so far for the most part.

He hits dial before he manages to talk himself out of it.

"Sid, hi," Flower says when he picks up, and his voice is so familiar Sid has to close his eyes against the tide of memories that threatens to swamp him.

"Flower," he says. "Hey, I saw the game. Congratulations." The words come out harder than he wants them to, but he means them.

"Thanks," Flower says. "Seriously, thanks Sid."

"That save in the third," Sid says. "You were on fire. I'm surprised you even picked up, actually. Shouldn't you still be celebrating?"

They end up talking for so long that Sid's coffee is sure to be cold when he gets back, but he doesn't care. Flower hadn't said he wished Sid could have been there, and Sid thinks he loves him for that. Flower might have thought it, but giving it voice would have just been cruel.

Sid takes his time walking, mentally unwinding from the nerves. By the time he reaches their hotel room, he almost feels like he's back to normal. He opens the door to find Claude lounging on top of the covers, reading a book that must have come from the lending library downstairs. When Claude sees him, he sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

"How'd it go?" he asks, using a receipt to mark his page.

"Good," Sid says. "We have an invitation to come to Flower's Cup day."

Claude pulls a face.

"What?" Sid asks.

"Isn't that a little… insensitive?" Claude asks.

Sid shrugs. "Not really. He said he'd like us to visit, but it doesn't have to be the Cup day. We just have an invitation—we could come later or earlier, but I want to. I think this is something I have to do."

"Alright," Claude says. "So when is it?"

"A couple of weeks. I was planning on staying for the week leading up to it, just to get a chance to hang out, but you get a say too," Sid says. "You don't have to come with me if you don't want to."

Claude gives him a look, like Sid isn't very bright. "Don't be an ass. You just said you think this is something you need to do. We're going." He hesitates then. "Unless you don't want me to come?"

Sid rolls his eyes. "Now who's being an ass?"

They keep moving, hit up a couple of tourist attractions, but it feels different now that Sid knows they're moving towards something and not just wandering. One of the hotels they stop at lists the Walmart pharmacy as a local attraction, which amuses Claude to no end.

"What's there to do?" he asks. "Play with the blood pressure machine? Ask for flu shots? Price out different meds?"

"STD tests," Sid says, snapping his fingers. He'd been meaning to bring it up, but it had kept slipping his mind.

Claude pauses. "Do they do those at Walmart?"

"No, we should get tested. Not right now, but once we get to Pittsburgh. Discretion," he says at Claude's inquiring look. "I know which doctors are trustworthy. I know I'm not in the news anymore, and I doubt anyone would care, but I'd rather not end up on the internet if I can help it."

"Fair," Claude says.

"You know, when those tests come back we won't have to buy condoms anymore," Sid says, pressing behind Claude. He runs his hands under the front of Claude's shirt just to hear his breath hitch.

"I mean, condoms make cleanup easier, but yes," Claude says, grinning as he turns around in Sid's arms. "You want me to mess you up?"

"Maybe," Sid says, and walks Claude backwards to the bed.

***

It's the beginning of July and almost time to meet up with Flower. The idea is both exciting and terrifying. He shouldn't be nervous, he knows, but somehow he is. He ends up burning off his excess energy through sex with Claude, but still. Claude deserves something better than Sid's neuroses.

"C'mon, let me take you out," Sid says, tracing the knobs in Claude's spine. Claude rolls over, and Sid's gaze is momentarily caught on his soft cock laying against his thigh. His mouth waters for a moment, but they're out of condoms, and anyway, he's got reservations.

"You gonna wine and dine me?" Claude asks, eyes lidded and gaze heavy.

"Only if you put on clothes," Sid says, but he takes a minute to kiss him, deep and filthy, before pulling away.

It's not a thank you for everything Claude's done for him, not really. If they tried to keep track of who was keeping who sane on any given day, Sid thinks they'd both go mad. It's more that they've been on the road for so long, and there's really nothing to substitute for actually getting to go somewhere nice, somewhere with real silverware and cloth napkins. Tomorrow they're going to be on the road heading to Flower's, but he wants tonight to be just about them.

At the restaurant it's almost too dark to read the menu, but they've got a good table with a view of the lake the place is situated on. It's not too pricy, because Claude gets squirrely when Sid spends money on him, but it's not shabby either.

There's a couple at the next table over, feeding each other bites of food. They're holding hands on top of the table, and when the woman gets some sauce on her chin, the man leans over and kisses it off.

"If we ever get that lovey, shoot me," Claude says, side-eyeing them.

"You don't think it's kind of cute?" Sid asks, because he can't resist riling Claude up. He's not one for public displays of affection, especially after the media craze surrounding him in the past, but there's something to be said for not having to hide.

"I think if you tried that with me, you'd be wearing your food," Claude tells him, and then the waiter comes over to take their order.

It's a nice night. The food is good but not too fancy, and the ambiance is peaceful. Sid smiles at Claude over the candle the waiter had lit for them, and Claude smiles back. They're just trying to figure out if they want dessert or not when the waiter comes back over with a couple of glasses of champagne.

"Compliments of the chef," he says as he sets them down at their table. It's probably because of Sid—someone's recognized him, maybe—and usually special treatment makes him uncomfortable, but tonight it just rolls off of him.

"Thank you," he says, and the waiter nods and heads across the room.

"I guess dating you does have some perks," Claude says, grinning over at him, his skin turned a warm gold by the candle. He clicks his flute to Sid's before downing it in its entirety, then starts choking.

"Alright?" Sid asks.

Claude raises a finger and spits something into the palm of his hand.

It's a ring.

It's like the entire restaurant continues around them while their table holds completely still. Claude's staring at the ring in his hand, and Sid's staring at the ring in his hand, and he's pretty sure the couple the table over is staring at the ring in his hand.

"Yes," Claude says, looking up at Sid, but Sid is frozen. He knows how this looks: the intimate restaurant, the candle on the table, the _ring_ , but he can't find the words to stop this trainwreck.

The waiter comes bustling over, a look of barely concealed panic on his face, and starts stuttering out apologies. He plucks the ring out of Claude's hand, and Claude's face runs through a string of emotions too quickly for Sid to catch before landing on 'stunned.'

"You really thought I was proposing with a ring in a glass of champagne," Sid asks blankly as the man at the table beside them excuses himself from his date and starts after the waiter. "That's a choking hazard." He knows it's the wrong thing to say the minute it's out of his mouth.

Claude's shoulders stiffen, and his back is up when he says, "Well, it is uninspired, so you can understand why I thought that."

Sid reaches out for his hand, but Claude pulls away, wiping the hand that had been holding the ring on his pants and closing in on himself.

"Let's just go," Claude says when Sid opens his mouth. He has to say something, but the words won't come. Claude is already getting up, pushing his chair back in a jerky motion. He's a blotchy red that Sid can make out even in the dim lighting, and his expression is shuttered.

Sid reaches for his wallet, but the look that Claude gives him stills his hand. Claude grabs his own wallet and starts pulling out bills, and for one terrible moment Sid thinks he won't have enough cash on him, but then Claude unearths another twenty. The last thing they need is a fight about money right now.

He trails Claude as he walks out of the restaurant, fast. In the car, Sid opens his mouth to say something, he doesn't know what, but Claude cranks the radio louder and he give up.

"I don't want to talk about it," is the first thing out of Claude's mouth when they're back in the hotel room.

"It's too soon," Sid says, ignoring him. "It's not that I don't want to, or that—"

"I said I don't want to talk about it," Claude says, talking over him. There's an ugly flush rising up his cheeks, and Sid really doesn't want him to feel humiliated, but there's nothing he can do about it.

"Claude, we _have_ to talk about this."

"Not right now, we don't," Claude says, kicking his shoes off without bothering to untie them. "Look, we have to be on the road early if you want to get to Pittsburgh tomorrow. Let's just call it a night."

"It's—" Sid checks his watch. "It's not even eight."

"I'm tired. I'm going to sleep," Claude snaps. "You can do whatever."

Sid sits at the desk while Claude bangs around in the bathroom, and he won't look at Sid when he comes back out. Sid tries reading for a little while, but finally he give up and goes to brush his teeth. Claude is a stiff, unhappy presence at the edge of the bed when he gets back. Sid should be glad that he hasn't stormed out to lick his wounds in private, but he can't help thinking that would have been the easier outcome to deal with.

"Claude," he whispers. "Claude." He knows Claude isn't asleep already, but he keeps ignoring him. Sid closes his eyes and tries not to think about how everything had spiraled out of control so quickly.

He's dreaming about trying to drive a train while shoveling coal into a burner when the lamp on his side of the bed clicks on.

"Okay, I'm ready to talk now," Claude says, his shadow disappearing as he moves back. Sid groans. He can't see the alarm clock, but he knows it's entirely too early to be awake.

"It's not even light out," he complains, but he levers himself up anyway.

"I can't sleep, and since we're going to be driving all of tomorrow, I don't want to be the reason we crash."

Claude pauses, and Sid give him space to put his words together.

"Do you know how embarrassing it is to say yes to what you think is a marriage proposal, only to realize that you weren't actually being proposed to?" Claude asks, voice low. "Like, I know I'm more invested in this relationship that you are, and I'm honestly shocked at how that happened, but—"

"You aren't," Sid interrupts, still trying to shake off the last vestiges of sleep. "Why would you say that?"

Claude shakes his head. "Just let me finish, okay? I just knew that if you were asking, I was saying yes. And maybe that makes me an idiot, since we haven't really been dating for that long, but I don't care. Okay, now you go."

Sid's still stuck on the first part. "Just because I wasn't proposing doesn't mean I'm not as invested in this relationship as you, or that I don't love you, or that I don't… see a future together," he says. It's too early in the morning for this, but he's trying. If he fucks this up, it's going to be even harder to bring it up later. "I just—never saw marriage as something really necessary. There was always hockey, and then I didn't really have time for dating because I was a mess. And right now, it's just…"

"Too soon," Claude fills in for him. "I know. It was just… a split-second decision. It doesn't really mean anything."

He's lying. That's not what it means at all, Sid thinks, and he's directly contradicting himself. But then Claude leans back over him and turns the light off, and it's too dark to see him anymore.

"Alright, that's all I wanted to say," Claude tells him. "Can we just forget this day even happened?"

Sid wants to say yes, but he doesn't think that's possible. He's sure they're done having this conversation tonight, though. He'll have to figure out how to bring it up later, when the sun is actually shining and they both aren't running on little to no sleep. He glances at the alarm clock and tries not to figure up the time difference between now and when they're supposed to get up.

It's going to be a long drive.

***

"Can you pull over soon?" Sid asks, one hand on the dash, the other white-knuckling the door handle. He'd woken up twenty minutes ago from a nap, already feeling disoriented, and the windy road they're on isn't helping settle his stomach.

"Yeah," Claude says, flicking on his turn signal for the upcoming exit. "We need gas anyways. You wanna drive?"

Sid stares straight ahead at the road, swallowing compulsively, and doesn't answer. Getting to the gas station requires two left turns and a right, and by the time Claude pulls up to the pump, it's all Sid can do to get his seatbelt off and the door open.

"Hey, are you okay?" Claude asks. "Is it your head?"

"Give me a minute," Sid gets out. He feels wobbly, even sitting here with his feet on the ground. He thinks if he tries to stand up right now it's not going to be pretty.

"Do you want me to get you something?" Claude asks. "I can go—"

Sid holds up one finger and leans over to throw up.

"Jesus, Sid," Claude says.

Sid stands up and makes his way to the trashcan by the windshield wiper bucket before he throws up again, almost tripping on the lip of concrete.

He doesn't know how long he stands there, breathing through his mouth so he won't have to smell the vomit or the garbage, but it's long enough that a woman pulls up to the pump on the other side of the divider. He sees her trying to ignore him when he gags, but manages to keep his food down.

"Here," Claude says, back from wherever he'd disappeared to. He twists the top off a water bottle and hands it to Sid.

Sid takes the water, but he just holds it for a minute before leaning over to throw up again. This time it comes out through his nose as well, so he can't breathe. He hears Claude gag, then quickly walk away.

The woman pumping gas on the other side of the divider finishes paying and pulls out, and Sid's stomach hurts. He stands up straight after a couple of minutes, wipes a shaky hand across his forehead, and takes a swig of water.

"You okay?" Claude asks, still looking a little pale. Sid hadn't known he was a sympathetic vomiter.

"No, I'm good now," he says after thinking about it for a minute. "Just, can we take a different route?"

***

Sid's stomach still hurts when they stop for lunch, but he knows he needs to eat something. He finishes off a bowl of soup with no problem, but it's Claude who's picking at his food. He's got half of his grilled cheese eaten and the rest is untouched.

"Carsick?" Sid asks, but he's pretty sure that's not the case.

Claude shrugs, and he doesn't take the opportunity to tease Sid for his own bout of vomiting earlier, which is worrying. The surface of Sid's coffee ripples as Claude taps out a quick rhythm on the table.

"Are you nervous?" Sid asks, slightly baffled. "What are you nervous about?"

Claude kicks him under the table, and Sid tucks his feet out of range. Claude is wearing flip flops, but he hasn't clipped his toenails in a while.

"I'm about to meet a famous NHL player, why wouldn't I be nervous?"

"I'm a famous NHL player," Sid tells him, stealing a fry off Claude's plate. "You didn't have any problem with me, I seem to recall."

Claude scowls out the giant pane window. "That's different. I wasn't trying to impress you. I didn't know you'd be sticking around."

"Well—"

"He's your friend," Claude says, cutting him off. "Okay? He's important to you. That's why it matters."

Well, now Sid's the asshole, isn't he. He nudges Claude's foot with his own in a silent apology, and Claude links their ankles together.

"He'll love you," he says softly, and reaches out to catch Claude's hand. He ends up with his elbow resting in a patch of something sticky, but it's not important. "And even if he doesn't, it doesn't matter."

Claude doesn't look convinced.

***

For all that Claude was afraid Flower would hate him on sight or whatever, the introductions go off without a hitch. Flower meets them for dinner when they get to Pittsburgh, texting Sid directions for a restaurant a couple of blocks away from the hotel they're staying at.

"Flower," Sid calls when Flower enters their private room. He gets up from the table and reaches out his hand, and Flower wraps him up in a hug. He's still got his soul patch and the same ropy muscles in his arms, like the passage of time hasn't touched him.

"Finally dropped in, eh?" Flower says when he pulls back. He ruffles Sid's hair. "It's a modern miracle," and Sid rolls his eyes.

Claude had stood up when Sid did, and Sid gestures to him. "Claude, this is Flower. Flower, this is my partner, Claude." He catches the surprised look Claude shoots him at the term, and shrugs. Boyfriend hadn't seemed like it had enough weight.

"Hi, welcome to Pittsburgh," Flower says, shaking Claude's hand. "Feel free to call me Marc-Andre."

Claude asks him something in French, and Flower replies in kind, and then they both look at Sid and snicker.

Sid thinks he might regret introducing them.

Dinner goes off without a hitch, the conversation meandering from their roadtrip to Flower's daughter to the shenanigans they used to get up to, so when Claude stands up to leave while Sid's debating what to get for dessert, he's confused.

"I promised I'd skype Cameron tonight," Claude tells him, checking his watch. "And anyways, I figure you two want some time alone. It was nice to meet you," he says, shaking Flower's hand again. "I'm sure there will be plenty of time to hang out later. You'll have to tell me all of your embarrassing stories."

"Absolutely," Flower tells him, and Sid doesn't like his smile.

Claude turns back to Sid and leans in for a kiss, then seems to hesitate. Sid tugs him in instead.

"Do you want the keys?" he asks when he breaks the kiss, but Claude just shakes his head.

"It's not that far, I'll walk." He sketches a wave at the both of them, then heads for the exit while their waitress comes back to take their dessert order.

They fill up the silence while they're waiting for their chocolate volcanoes to arrive, but Sid doesn't want to have their entire visit go like that—avoiding the gaps, like that'll solve anything.

"I'm sorry for disappearing," he says, even though it's a non sequitur, even thought it was years ago. "It didn't have anything to do with you or the guys, it just was easier. I didn't have to be around hockey all the time, or think about it, and you didn't need me."

"You were our captain," Flower says, like he's been thinking about this. His voice is low. "And even once you weren't that anymore, you were still Sid. You could have stayed with any one of us for a while, or we could have helped you work something out."

It would have been easier, Sid thinks, rather than the aimless wandering he'd done instead. But then he might never have started working with the hockey clinics or met Claude. Staying close to home would have been safer, and he does regret losing touch with the people who used to be cornerstones in his life, but he doesn't know if it would have really been any better, in the end.

"Thanks," he says. "I know you would have had my back, but I couldn't have stayed. I wish I could have," he says, but he's not sure if he's lying or telling the truth.

Flower looks like he gets it. "Well, I'm glad you're back from wherever you've been hiding," he says, shrugging. "I forgave you a long time ago. Just don't stop answering my calls again," and that's it. It's so easy that it takes Sid a minute to process, and then the conversation turns to mutual friends.

He looks across the table at Flower, talking with his hands, and takes a bite of his volcano. It's nothing special, but the chocolate feels like silk on his tongue.

***

Claude's just getting out of the shower when Sid gets back to their room, and Sid sits on the edge of the bed and watches him pull on his ratty sleep clothes. The shorts are fraying at waistband and the shirt's got bleach stains, but he likes the way they fit on Claude's body.

"You didn't have to leave, you know," he says. "I liked being with the two of you."

Claude just shrugs and hangs up the towel he'd left on the bed. "Yeah, but I figured you guys needed some time alone. And I really did tell Cameron I'd skype him."

"Okay," Sid says. He watches Claude move around the room for a minute before patting the space next to him. "Where do you want to go after this?" he asks.

"I think I want to stop running," Claude says quietly. He rubs a hand through his hair, then crawls up on the bed to sit by Sid. "These last couple of months have been amazing, but I think I'm ready to stop. Not right now, but probably soon."

"Do you want to go back home?" Sid asks carefully. He doesn't know what he'll do if the answer's yes.

"Sid, I want to go where you go," Claude says, looking him in the eye. "If you haven't figured that out by now, I don't know what to tell you."

"You could choose," Sid tells him. It feels too quiet in the room, suddenly. It could just be the air conditioner kicking off, but he doesn't think so. "We don't have to do what I want. If you want to go live in a house on stilts on the beach, we could do that."

"I'm not picky," Claude says. "You're the one with a career that matters. I can do anything."

"Just because I'm a more high-profile person doesn't mean I'm more important. I'd give it up if I could," he says.

Claude shrugs. "I know you would, but that doesn't make it any less true. And anyways, I don't know what I want. When I do, we'll talk."

"And you think I do?" Sid laughs.

"You fake it pretty well, at least," Claude says, and Sid can feel the mattress move as he shifts, putting his back to the headboard. "Don't you ever get scared?" he asks. "That this is all it's ever going to be? That it's all… less than you wanted?"

"Sometimes," Sid says honestly, but he knows it's different. He's got money and options that Claude doesn't have, and if his life becomes a cage, it's a different one than what Claude will inhabit. "But I don't think you can live like that, not really."

They both sit there, Sid looking at how the lights from the tiny casino across the street are turning the gauzy white curtain orange. The thicker curtain is still pulled back, neither of them having remembered to shut it. Finally Claude breaks the silence.

"By the way, why'd you keep coming back? It's not like the town was anything special."

"It was pretty in the fall," Sid says, shrugging. He traces the design of a flower printed on the comforter. "And maybe a bit of… I don't know if nostalgia would be the right word. And you, later."

"Just think, you could be living a whole different life right now if you'd never met me," Claude says. Sid knows what it sounds like when Claude's trying to lighten the tone, but he just hums.

"Maybe," he says, "but I'm not sure I want to know what it'd look like."

***

They get their STD tests done the next day, and Sid hangs out with Flower for a couple of hours while Claude explores the area around the hotel. He texts Sid pictures as he goes, from an artsy shot of a trashcan to Sid's birthstone in some New Age store. Around dinner time, Sid's back at the hotel and Claude sends him a picture of a sign that says "50 cent wings!!!" and then, _come meet me its the bar a block north of hotel :DDD cant miss it._

Sid doesn't really want to eat at a bar, but a beer sounds pretty good. He meanders his way towards the place, enjoying the heat of the day. It'll be unbearable in August, but they won't be around by then.

When he reaches the building with the sign, there's a brawl going on in the parking lot. It looks pretty one-sided, but there's a knot of people watching. When Sid gets close enough to recognize that the man on the ground has orange hair, he breaks into a run.

"Hey," he yells, shoving off the guy on top of Claude—a mountain of a man with tattoos winding up his neck.

A couple of men who must be the guy's friends are pulling him back now as well, and one of them says, "Hey, aren't you…?" but Sid isn't paying attention to them.

"Are you okay?" he says, dragging Claude to his feet and starting to pat him down. The small crowd that had formed starts to break up, grumbling.

"Stop it, I'm fine," Claude says, trying to bat Sid's hands off him. Sid takes one look at the guy who'd been mashing Claude's face into the parking lot and decides they need to be somewhere else right now.

"What the fuck were you thinking," Sid hisses. His worry has slipped right over into anger. He's got a hand around Claude's bicep, dragging him down the street, and it's taking everything he's got not to just grab him and _shake_. "Are you drunk?"

"No, I'm not drunk. Fuck! I can walk by myself," Claude growls at him, pushing Sid off. He's got beer spilled all over the front of his shirt, and Sid can see the gravel clinging to his skin.

"Then what were you doing _brawling_ in the parking lot with a guy _twice your size?_ "

"He was talking shit about you! I'm sorry I didn't want to sit around and listen to that asshole," Claude says, rounding on him. They've made it to an alley, but even in the dim light Sid can see the shine of blood smeared across his face. "If I'd know you were going to be such a dick about it, I would have—"

Sid stops listening. Claude is infuriating. He's always infuriating, but somehow even more so with blood all over his face, spitting mad, crowding Sid in a dingy alley. It's like some switch gets tripped, and all of Sid's shaky adrenaline gets turned into want.

Sid moves fast, can't stand to not be touching Claude now. He backs him up into the brick wall of the building behind him, his hand up to cushion the back of Claude's head, and kisses him hard. It's desperate, and Sid can taste the copper tang of blood, and there's the smell of garbage drifting from a dumpster, but he can't help himself.

Claude gives everything he's given right back to Sid, his hands coming up to grab his shoulders, his tongue in Sid's mouth.

They're not that far from the bar if anyone comes after them, but Sid's not thinking straight. He wants Claude's skin hot under his touch, to feel him arching against him, catch his bitten off moans with his mouth.

"Not here," Claude pants, but he doesn't make a move to stop, and in fact pulls Sid closer.

"You scared me," Sid tells him. He bites his jaw in reproach, can feel the grit against his lips from the parking lot grime still stuck to Claude's skin.

"I can take care of myself," Claude huffs, and Sid doesn't say anything about how, if that was taking care of himself, he isn't very good at it.

Claude pushes Sid back and puts some distance between them, then starts fumbling with Sid's pants. His eyes are bright, and this is part of the reason why Sid loves Claude and why he wants to kill him sometimes—his sheer inability to quit.

"C'mon, c'mon," Claude says, but he winces when he takes a step forward, and Sid finally comes to his senses.

"You're a fucking menace," he says, batting Claude's hands away. "We're not having sex here. We need to get you fixed up."

"I'm not going to the doctor," Claude says. "It's not that bad—I can take care of it."

"Like you took care of that guy?" Sid asks. He prods at Claude's ribs gingerly. It's not like he actually knows what he's looking for, but he figures if something's broken, he'll know somehow.

Claude pushes his hand away. "It's just bruised. Trust me, I've fractured ribs before. And no, I didn't hit my head," he says with a scowl, anticipating what Sid was going to say next.

"Fine," Sid says. "But if you start feeling worse, we're going."

Claude glares at him, but Sid figures that the best he's going to get.

They make their way back to the hotel, Claude holding his ribs and Sid keeping a lookout for anyone who might be out for them. He gets Claude into the bathroom with a minimal amount of swearing, then jogs back outside for the first aid kit he keeps in the car. The concierge gives him a funny look when he comes back in, but doesn't say anything. Sid's not sure how reassuring that is, but he's got more important things to think about. He takes the stairs instead of the elevator and lets himself back in their room.

Claude's gotten his shirt off and has tried rinsing out the abrasion on his forehead with water, if the soaked towel lying to the side of the sink is any indication. He's sitting on the closed toilet, picking something out of the scrape on his palm, and he looks up and makes a face when Sid appears in the doorway.

The normalcy of the gesture calms something in Sid that had been on high alert since he recognized Claude on the ground outside the bar. He takes a breath, then lets it out slowly. He sets the first aid kit down on the remaining bit of counter space and starts digging out everything he's going to need.

"You know, I've never had someone get in a fight for my honor before," he tells Claude, leaning up against the dingy sink. "Not off the ice, I mean." He's struggling to get the foil off the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, the little tab too small to grasp properly.

"Yeah, well. I guess there's a first time for everything," Claude says, and Sid finally wins the battle against the pull-tab.

"Okay, let's get you cleaned up," Sid says. He dumps some of the liquid on a white face towel and brings it towards Claude's face. He doesn't want to think about what the maids are going to say after they're done here.

"What did you do to your hand," Claude says, grabbing it before the towel can reach him. Sid looks down and sees that his knuckles are scraped. Scabs are already starting, but his middle knuckle is bleeding sluggishly.

"Huh," he says. He remembers the sting of pain when he'd cushioned Claude's head kissing him in the alley, but he'd had better things to think about. Then, "Quit trying to distract me."

Claude huffs. "This is the thanks I get," he complains, but he lets Sid go and holds still.

"It was stupid," Sid tells him, cleaning out the raw skin near his hairline. He tips Claude's head more towards the light. "You could have gotten arrested, or hurt. Hurt worse," he amends.

"You're hurting me right now," Claude hisses as Sid tries to get out the embedded grit.

"Don't be such a baby," Sid tells him, tightening his hold on Claude's chin, but he does try to be a little more careful. "You start a bar fight, that's what you get."

"Well, I had you to finish it, didn't I?" Claude says. He rips open a bandaid and starts putting antibacterial stuff on it. Sid doesn't know where Claude thinks he's going to stick it, since the entire side of forehead is pretty scraped up, but he doesn't comment.

"What did he say, anyway?" Sid asks, washing out the cloth he'd been using. The white has turned a dirty red, gray in some places. Before he can go back to what he was doing, Claude catches his hand.

"Make a fist," he instructs, and when Sid does he stick the bandaid on Sid's knuckle, the one that had taken the brunt of the impact. Sid flexes his hand, and the bandaid bunches strangely as his skin stretches. It feels like there's a lump just below his adam's apple.

"I told you, he was talking shit," Claude continues, like nothing's happened.

"Specific," Sid says after he's cleared his throat of the lingering emotion, but he doesn't push.

He patches Claude up without too much fuss, dirtying another towel in the process. Claude's ribs aren't as bad as he'd been imagining, and the abrasions on the side of Claude's face will heal eventually. It could be worse.

"You might scar," Sid tells him, running a light finger over the gauze he'd stuck across the worst of the scrapes.

"Whatever will I do without my handsome charm," Claude deadpans.

"I don't know," Sid says. "Maybe a scar will make you look roguish."

"Maybe," Claude says, and there's something considering in his eyes. He presses the arch of his foot against Sid's leg and drags it up his calf and back down.

Sid stares at him. "What are you doing?"

Claude gives him bedroom eyes, and tops it off by cupping Sid through his pants. "A fight kind of gets me going."

"Oh, is that what we're calling it now?" Sid asks.

Claude sighs and drops his head down to rest against Sid's belly. "Come on," he says, plaintive. "I just got my ass kicked for you. Aren't you at least going to reward me?"

"You'll get blood on the sheets," Sid says, but it's a halfhearted protest. From the way Claude runs a finger up Sid's hardening dick, he knows it, too.

"Only if you mess up my bandage. And anyways, I think it's scabbing over now."

"But—" Sid says, but he knows he's already lost this fight.

"Sid," Claude says, looking up at him in all of his battered glory. "Stop being so vanilla and fuck me."

Sid does.

***

"Did you bring me breakfast?" Claude asks the next morning, sitting up carefully. "Is that coffee?" He makes grabby hands.

Sid rolls his eyes. "Yes, but maybe I should take it back, just to make sure you learn your lesson."

"I'll be sure to punch the next guy I fight in the throat," Claude says absently, and Sid sighs but passes him the cup. Claude pops the lid off and sticks his nose over it, inhaling happily as he does.

"Hey," Sid says. "I was going to tell you yesterday, but then I forgot. Do you want to go skating later today? Some of the guys are still in town. Not a lot—" he hastens to add as Claude's eyes get wide. "Flower said it was going to be a French-Canadian thing—get out on the rink as a kind of last hurrah before summer starts for real, just hit the puck around for a bit. He said we could come too."

Flower had brought it up—no-strings, no-pressure—after he'd put his daughter down for a nap. He'd looked like he'd been braced for Sid to be an asshole about it, but Sid had said, "Yeah, I'd like that," and had been surprised to find he meant it.

"The rink's got sticks and pucks," he continues when Claude's still silent. "And I just. I miss it." More than he can put into words most days, even though it's nothing like it used to be when he first retired.

"Alright," Claude says, then seems to hesitate. "But do you know how long it's been since I've been on the ice? I'll just slow you down."

"It's not like we're playing an actual game," Sid says, and Claude gives him a look that says he knows just how competitive Sid can get.

"You're sure you want me there?" he asks, skeptical. "It could just be you NHLers."

"Nah," Sid says. "Flower said you were cool, and I'd like the other guys to meet you. But are you sure you want to go skating? I can't imagine your ribs are going to thank you."

"I might not have been NHL-caliber, but I _did_ play hockey," Claude says, raising an eyebrow. He ruins the gesture by immediately raising a hand to pick at his bandage. "This isn't my first rodeo, I'm not going to break."

Sid knocks his hand away. "Fine," he says, shrugging. "But don't expect me to go easy on you."

"Easy?" Claude says, sounding outraged. "Go _easy_ on me? I think you'll find you've got it backwards. I'll be the one going easy on _you_."

They hang around the hotel and order in lunch, and then it's time to head over to the rink. Talbo, Tanger, and Duper are already inside when they pull up, and Sid wonders how much Flower is paying to keep this out of the press. He says his hellos and slaps people on the back, introduces Claude and tries to listen to too many conversations happening at the same time. They make plans to get dinner after they're done skating and have had a chance to get cleaned up, and then, before he knows it, before he has a chance to start freaking out, Sid's walking down the hallway from the changing rooms and out onto the rink.

It seems like it should be something huge, but it's just the step from the carpet onto the ice, still wet from the Zamboni. It's not a sensation that Sid has ever forgotten, and he thinks it might be tangled up in his DNA—fresh ice and the smell of a locker room, the single perfect moment of the puck on his stick on a breakaway, the sheer physicality of it all. The freedom.

The grief is still there, but he thinks it always will be. It's not as large as it used to be, not the same all-encompassing pool of dread and longing he'd felt the first time he'd helped with a hockey clinic. The thought shouldn't make him sad, but it does. He's moving on.

He skates a lap, just reveling in the push and glide of his skates, the refrigerated air on his face. Claude is over by the boards talking to Flower in French, and Duper and Tanger have finished putting the goals back in place and are now playing keep away on the other end of the ice, and Talbo's messing with his stick. It's nothing like the NHL, and yet it's all so familiar at the same time.

Sid comes to a stop at the boards in time to catch the tail end of what Claude's saying.

"My knee's fine, seriously. I'm not wearing kneepads. Marc-Andre's not wearing pads," he says, appealing to Sid.

"Yeah, but I'm not playing goalie," Flower says, looking unimpressed. Sid shoots him a grateful look behind Claude's back.

"I told you, this is stupid. It's not like I'm going to fall down," Claude complains, but Sid highly doubt that. Even spending so much time on the ice, he knows Claude still has issues with his knee, and there's no way he's letting him get banged up if he can help it.

"Do you need me to wear them too? Will that make you feel better?" Sid asks. He's not being serious, but Claude's eyes brighten.

"Yes. But not the kneepads. Wear a helmet to protect your fragile brain."

Flower looks like he doesn't know if it's okay to laugh. The last time he'd tried to say something about Sid's concussion, not even a joke, Sid had ended up breaking some of his and Vero's dishes. He's not proud of how he'd acted back then, but the contrast between where he'd been and where he is now is striking.

"I'll look like an idiot," Sid complains, and can almost feel Flower let out the breath he'd been holding.

Claude just grins at him. "I know. We'll be a matched set."

Sid ends up wearing a helmet someone finds in storage, but Claude's got kneepads on over his pants, so Sid's okay with the tradeoff. When they get on the ice for real, Claude's moving a little stiff from his fight, but he loosens up quickly enough. Sid skates half a lap backwards, but he turns around at the sound of someone hitting the ice.

Claude's down by the hash marks, but he's pushing himself back up. He holds his hand out for Sid as he comes closer.

"No," Sid tells him. "I'm not falling for that."

"Sid, come on," Claude says. He looks rather pathetic down on the ice, but Sid wasn't born yesterday.

"How dumb do I look?" Sid skates a circle around him, then comes to a stop.

"You look like you're not getting laid tonight," Claude grumbles, glaring at him. He's rubbing at his knee over the protector, and Sid hesitates. He doesn't think Claude's actually hurt, but the possibility that he might be is enough to have him reaching for Claude's outstretched hand.

Sid has just enough time to see Claude grin before he's being yanked down to the ice, Claude kicking his skate for good measure. He lands mostly on Claude, but his knee protests from the impact.

"I can't believe you fell for that," Claude says, laughing. He raps his knuckles against Sid's helmet. "Maybe it's too late to protect that brain of yours, eh?"

Sid goes to tickle him, and Claude almost smacks him with his skate. Claude's laughter is this ugly, uncontrolled thing, and Sid can't help but laugh along.

"Stop, stop," he gasps. "My ribs."

"Shit, sorry," Sid say, and rolls off him to lie on his back. It's cold, but Sid likes it—it's like he's rewriting over the time he'd gone out on the pond in Claude's town, the winter he'd spent there in the beginning.

"Hey," he hears, and picks his head up in time to raise his arm as Tanger snows them. "Are we going to skate or what?"

"Yeah, just give me a minute to warm up," Sid says. He picks himself up off the ice, and Claude does as well. They start skating without discussing it, matching each other around the ice. Sid can see the bones of what was there before, the skill Claude must have had. He wonders if it's the same for him, if his teammates can see who he used to be, or if the layers are too opaque.

They do laps, faster and faster, and Sid almost believes that if he closed his eyes he could hear the roar of the crowd, with him or against him he isn't sure. He shuts them for the length of a stride, and when he opens them, there's one terrifying minute where it almost looks like the rink is swinging around him. It's like he's going to have a repeat of his attack of dizziness on the pond, but then everything stabilizes.

Sid lets out a breath. If there's any place that should feel safe, it's the ice. Losing that certainty was probably the worst part of his concussions.

Claude has peeled off from him and is over by the boards, but Sid slows to a halt by the blue line. He stares up at the pendants hanging from the rafters, all the teams who played, and won, and lost, and broke records, and just stands there for a minute. It's all at the high school and college level, not the pros, but he feels nostalgic anyway.

Something thunks off his skate blade, and Sid looks down to see a puck.

"I thought we were playing hockey," he hears, and looks up to see Claude skating towards him with two sticks. "Or are you scared of how badly I'm going to beat you?"

"Oh," Sid says, acting surprised. "I thought you were going to be on my team. Someone said we needed a handicap…?"

"Everybody in," Tanger calls, cutting off whatever Claude was going to say. Duper and Talbo skate over from where they'd been messing around, and Flower jumps the boards. They form a loose circle, and Sid's _missed_ this.

"Alright," Flower says, shifting his weight from skate to skate. "Three-on-three, no hitting, shirts versus skins. We'll turn the goals around, and we've got the rink until four. Now who's ready to play some fucking hockey, eh?"

It's not Sid's gear, and it's not his rink, and it's not quite his team, but he's ready. He grins at nothing in particular as he puts on his gloves and sets his stick blade on the ice. He's ready.

***

"Here," Claude says, tossing him the keys as they're making their way through the parking lot. "Loser doesn't have to drive."

Sid jingles the keys but doesn't protest. As he navigates back to the hotel, his mind is on the game—the way getting on the ice had been bittersweet, but also a kind of victory. It had been years since he'd actually played, and however painful it was to remember what he'd lost, he'd also gotten to have this.

It's not until he pulls into the hotel that he realizes something's wrong.

"Claude?" he asks when the engine's shut off. Claude is just sitting there, eyes closed, a look of concentration on his face.

"Just give me a minute," he says, voice tight.

"Do you need me to carry you inside?" Sid asks. It's an honest question—if Claude says yes he'll do it.

"No," Claude says, but it's a while before he gets out.

Sid shadows him across the parking lot, trying to stay close enough that he can catch him if he falls, and calls the elevator. He gets the door when it looks like Claude's going to dig through his pockets to find the keycard.

"I thought you were doing okay," Sid says as he watches Claude sits down at the edge of the bed and pull his leg up after him.

"I took some ibuprofen beforehand," Claude says. The bedspread bunches under his fist, and his eyes are closed. "Can you get me some water?" he asks. The strain in his voice makes Sid want to hurt something.

"Yeah," Sid says, and disappears into the bathroom.

He focuses on the way the aerator in the faucet makes the water bubble as it fills the cup, instead of on how shaky he feels. He doesn't know why this is hitting him like this. It's not like Claude's bad knee is new, or like Claude is losing the game for the first time. Still, he hates seeing him in pain.

Sid turns off the faucet and takes the cup back out to Claude. "Why have you never gotten it fixed?" he asks when Claude has finished drinking.

Claude squints at him. "You know how much money I have, right?"

"And it's not like you're dating a millionaire or anything," Sid says dryly.

Claude rolls over and sticks his face into the comforter. He says something that Sid is pretty sure translates to, "Fuck off."

Sid waits him out. Finally, Claude turns his head and says, "I don't want to be a burden. And it's your money. You should be the one to use it."

"Well, what if I want to use it on you?" The frown lines are deepening around Claude's eyes, and Sid knows that if he pushes too hard right now all he'll accomplish is a fight. He'll try to wear him down later.

Claude is rubbing absentmindedly at his knee, so Sid scoots closer and bats his hand away, replacing it with his own.

"You don't have to do that," Claude says, looking uncomfortable. "It doesn't actually do anything, it's just habit."

Sid gently presses his fingers into the edge of Claude's kneecap. "I don't have to do a lot of things. Stop me if you want, but it's not like putting my hands on you is a hardship."

"You're such a fucking sap," Claude say, but he relaxes into the mattress.

"I know," Sid tells him. He grabs the remote off the bedside table with his free hand and drops it on Claude's chest. "Now, shut up and watch you soaps."

Claude falls asleep halfway through an episode of M*A*S*H. Sid slides off the bed, trying not to jostle him too much, and makes a call from the bathroom. He was supposed to go out with the guys after skating, but he doesn't wanted to leave Claude alone in the hotel room. If Claude knew, he'd probably kill him, and Sid knows that Claude's perfectly capable of taking care of himself, that he's been dealing with his knee for years, but still. Rescheduling their meal to lunch tomorrow isn't a big deal.

He figures what Claude doesn't know can't hurt him.

***

Claude's knee seems marginally better the next day, though he's still walking with a limp. Sid goes out to get a gatorade from the vending machine, and when he walks back in Claude's on the phone. He's speaking French, so he's probably talking to Danny. Sid knows that Cameron is helping paint some mural, and Claude had showed him the pictures of the other two playing ball hockey the other day. He loves them, Sid knows. He wonders if that will be enough to keep him near that town, even after everything.

He's jarred out of his thoughts by the faint sound of his ringtone. He fumbles around in the sheets, finally finding his phone under his pillow, and picks it up on the fourth ring.

"Hel—"

"French-Canadian day," Flower says, before Sid can even finish getting out a greeting. "Tell your boyfriend to get ready. I'm picking him up and we're going out for lunch, just the two of us."

"You know, if you try and prank him, don't come crying to me when it backfires." Sid tells him. "He can hold his own."

"I want to get to know him better, not haze him, or whatever you're thinking of," Flower says. It's hard to read his tone over the phone, but he sounds sincere. Or, as sincere as Flower ever sounds.

"Okay," Sid says, but he makes sure his skepticism comes through. "When is this?"

"Like, twenty minutes. I'm already in the car, make sure he doesn't weasel out," Flower says, and then hangs up without waiting for a response.

"Hey," Sid interrupts Claude when it sounds like he's at a good stopping point. "Flower just called, said he's coming over to take you to lunch?"

"Shit," Claude says. "Danny, I gotta go, I'll call you later," and hangs up.

"Do you not want to go?" Sid asks. "I can probably make up an excuse for you."

"No," Claude says, ruffling through his bag in search of something. "I'd just forgotten. He brought it up at the rink, and then I never got around to setting a reminder." He pulls out a pair of sunglasses and sticks them on top of his head.

"What?" he says when he catches Sid looking at him.

"Nothing," Sid says, trying to hide his smile. He kisses Claude quickly, then grabs his keys. "I'm going out with the rest of the guys, so call me if you need a ride after Flower leaves you somewhere."

Claude pauses. "Do you think that's likely to happen?"

"No, but you never know. Don't forget your keycard, love you, bye," he calls, and then he's out the door and headed to his own lunch.

Sid had been worried that being around his former teammates would be different now that they're not playing hockey, but it's not. It's strange how… _not_ strange it is to hang out with them. They fall back into the same patterns they always did, like the past few years never happened. Oh, it's not all the same. There are awkward gaps and silences, but mostly what gets to Sid is everything that he's missed.

Talbo had gotten married, and Duper has a bunch of pictures of his family to show him, and Tanger is still Tanger. Sid tries not to regret too many things these days, but he regrets this—the missing pieces, the anecdotes, the small changes that add up so you can only see them from a distance. He'd kept in touch with some people, but he'd fallen out of the habit or pushed away so many other. If he could do it all over again, he'd do it differently.

"But enough about us," Tanger says after Duper finishes a story about his cat.

"Yeah, tell us what you've been up to," Talbo says. "We know you've been holding back," and, well. These used to be some of the people closest to him, partly because of hockey, but partly just because of them. Sid's forgotten just how much he'd missed hanging out with them in person, instead of through text messages or emails or phone calls.

"Okay," he says, and begins.

***

Someone calls him over dessert, and he almost doesn't pick up. It's a Pittsburgh area code, though, so he excuses himself from the table, leaves his friends ribbing each other over yesterday's game.

It's the clinic, it turns out. Calling back with the results of the STD screen he'd gotten with Claude. One positive.

When the voice on the other end of the phone says chlamydia, Sid almost can't process it. He keeps waiting for the syllables to turn into something else—AIDS, or Hep C, or… something. Something worse.

It feels weird to be relieved over chlamydia, but if that's the worst it gets, he'll take it. It's strange knowing he has something wrong with him, an infection that didn't even show symptoms, but the shock passes quickly. Still, Sid thinks, it's hardly the worst thing that's happened to his body. What he's really concerned about is that, if he's gotten his results back by phone, he's sure Claude has as well.

The meal has already started breaking up, so Sid doesn't feel too bad about stepping out a couple minutes earlier than he'd been going to. He says his goodbyes and promises to meet up with them again before he leaves Pittsburgh, and then he's heading back to the hotel.

Claude's not there when Sid gets in, but the room is disturbed like Flower had already dropped Claude off. There's a book turned facedown on the bedspread that hadn't been there earlier, and the curtains have been closed halfway.

Sid tries calling, but Claude doesn't pick up. He checks the lobby, the weight room, the park, and the diner across the street, all to no avail. Sid had driven to the restaurant, so Claude must be around somewhere, but there's still the possibility that he'd called a ride or something. Vanished like Sid had after the Pens won the Cup.

He decides he'll check the park one last time, and if he can't find Claude by then, he'll just wait for him back at the hotel. He's not five minutes into the loop when he finds him sitting on a wooden bridge spanning a small stream, pants rolled up and feet in the water.

"Isn't that cold?" Sid asks as he folds himself down next to him.

Claude shrugs and flicks a pebble into the stream. He's got a whole pile sitting by his thigh, some spilling into the dip in the wood where one slat runs into the other.

Sid doesn't know how to say this, so he just goes for it. "I got a call from the clinic. I've got chlamydia."

Claude doesn't say anything, but he throws a handful of pebbles in the water, hard. Sid listens to them hit the surface and waits.

"You got me out of that town," Claude finally says. He laughs then, but it's not a happy sound. "Do you know what it's like to pray that they won't bury you in a place? Like, that couldn't be all there was. And I knew that. I just—" he shrugs. "I just couldn't get out. I don't know if I've ever said thank you. And in return, I fucking gave you chlamydia."

Sid doesn't know what to say to that. Claude tosses another pebble, and Sid scoots closer to him, wraps his arm around his waist. He's expecting Claude to tense up, maybe fight, but all Claude does is lean into him and put his head down on Sid's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Claude says, and he sounds so small. Claude shouldn't sound like that, but Sid doesn't know how to make him stop. He tightens his arm, like he can keep Claude together if he just holds on hard enough.

"You just have chlamydia, right?" Sid asks. "Nothing else."

He feels Claude nod, and the tension he'd been carrying since he found Claude sitting out there release. He doesn't want to think about anyone he knows having AIDS, not even with all the progress they've made. His mind shies away from the possibility.

They sit like that for a while, taking in the scenery while the afternoon wears on. Eventually, Claude sits up to pull his feet out of the water, but he puts his head back down after he's done.

"You know, I don't know why you're sitting out here blaming yourself," Sid finally tells him. "I could have given it to you."

Claude picks his head up to give him a look. "When's the last time you had unprotected sex, Sid?"

"Like…" Sid can't remember, actually. Even before he started hooking up with Claude, he hadn't been big on anonymous sex.

"Exactly," Claude says. " _I'm_ sorry about the chlamydia. God, I'm so—"

Sid presses his hand over Claude's mouth. "Don't," he says. "Don't apologize for this."

"But—" Claude says, the word muffled. Sid talks over him.

"Accidents happen," he says. "I don't think anyone gets an STD if they can help it."

Claude laughs once, a single mirthless bark, and then he's laughing for real. He buries his face in Sid's neck, and Sid shivers as his breath tickles his skin.

"Does nothing faze you?" Claude asks when he's finally gotten himself back under control. "This is your fucking health we're talking about. Aren't you even a little mad?"

Sid shrugs. "Well, it's your health, too. And it's not my first STD, you know."

The amount of surprise on Claude's face shouldn't be endearing, but it is. "Wait, what? Now you have to tell this story. Saint Sid, protector of all things hockey, with an STD?"

It's not really an interesting story, but Sid tries his best, and it makes the tight lines around Claude's eyes relax, which had been his goal all along.

They stay out until it starts sprinkling, and when they stand up Sid sweeps the last of the pebbles off with his foot. "Come on," he says. "Let's see about filling those prescriptions, eh?" But he kisses Claude before they get off the bridge, long and slow, because this doesn't change anything. If he was sure about Claude when Claude was falling apart last winter, he's sure of him now.

That night, after they've gotten everything straightened out and have both picked up and taken their meds, Claude curls next to him in bed and tucks his cold feet against Sid's shins. They can't have sex for a week, but Sid couldn't care less.

***

Sid goes for a walk in the morning before the day starts heating up. There's nothing quite like being in the city—the constant movement, the endless things to do—but he misses the silence and the sound of crickets he's grown used to. He wonders if there's ever a perfect place, where all the different pieces can come together to create some sort of utopia.

He ducks into a used bookstore hidden under a gold awning, and browses. He's not looking for anything in particular, but he likes the way the different books feel in his hands. He's just picked up a collection of poetry when he hears someone say, "Excuse me, are you Sidney Crosby?"

Sid turns, and there's an elderly man standing behind him, leaning heavily on a cane. It's been a while since someone's approached him, but he's not sure if that's because his face is becoming less familiar, or if it has something to do with the mess his career ended in, or if people are finally giving him some privacy. Still, he always tries not to be rude.

"Yes, hi," he says, putting down his book and shaking the hand the old man holds out.

"I'm sorry to bother you, I'm sure that must get annoying. I just wanted to say thank you. For coming out," he adds. "I know it's none of our business, and you have your own reasons, but my grandson is gay. It really meant a lot to him, having a role model who was like him."

"Oh," Sid says. He's had a couple of people come up to him over the years, but most of the attention has been on the out players who are still in the league. He'd been braced for a conversation about the Penguins, not this, and it's taking him a minute to recalibrate.

"Anyways, thank you. That's all I wanted to say, I don't want to interrupt your browsing," the man says, turning to go.

"Wait," Sid says, too loudly. "What's your name?" The man tells him. "Richard, is there any way I can sign something for your grandson?"

Sid ends up writing an inscription to Michael in the front of a battered copy of _Ender's Game_ that Richard pulls out of his bag, using a pen that has teeth marks on the end.

"Thank you," Richard tells him again when he hands the book back. "This is going to mean a lot to him."

"Thank _you_ ," Sid says, and shakes his hand again. "And the best to you and your grandson."

The encounter lingers in Sid's mind, even after he's finished looking around and is heading back to the hotel. It had still been too hard to think about hockey when he'd come out, and he knows he'd gotten letters from fans after the press release, but he hadn't seen them. He's sure someone had answered them, but it hadn't been him.

He thinks it's long past time he changed that.

***

Claude is in much better spirits than he was yesterday when Sid gets back to the hotel.

"What's this?" Claude asks, holding the poetry collection Sid had ended up buying. He'd wrapped it in newspaper down in the lobby, and Claude shakes it, holding it to his ear like he thinks it might rattle.

"It's just something I picked up. Go on, open it."

"It's not my birthday, you know," Claude says absently as he starts carefully sliding a finger under the tape. "And if this is supposed to be for some sort of anniversary I'm forgetting, just remember which one of us actually knows when our first date is."

He flips open the final flap of paper and turns over the book, and just looks at it for a minute.

"It's not anything special," Sid says, rubbing the back of his neck. "I didn't know if you would like it, but I thought of you, so I got it. It's okay if you don't," he adds. In their room, in Claude's hands, the book looks dingy and worn. It's not like Sid couldn't have afforded to get him something nice, he thinks, kicking himself.

"But—I didn't get you anything," Claude says, looking up from the book. He looks almost upset, which hadn't been Sid's goal.

"No, I don't need you to get me anything," he says. "So, you like it?" He tries suppress the hopeful note in his voice, but he thinks it comes through anyway.

Claude grins crookedly at him. "Ass. Don't fish for compliments."

He crosses the room and gets in Sid's space, kisses him with intent. "If we weren't both super diseased, you'd be naked by now, and I'd be doing terrible things to you."

"Claude," Sid sighs.

"Kidding," he says, rolling his eyes. "Not about the sex, though. I meant that part."

"I'll take a rain check," Sid tells him.

Claude spends the rest of the day reading bits of the book out loud to Sid, and Sid listens quietly, interrupting every so often to make Claude explain something to him. He's got a pretty good idea what he's getting Claude for Christmas, now.

***

Sid's up first, a couple of minutes before their alarm, and he goes down to get the paper and find something for breakfast. He gets recognized by the cashier in the bagel shop, but the man doesn't ask for an autograph. Sid smiles his gratitude and stuffs a twenty in the tip jar.

He drops the paper bag on the table when he gets back. "You know how many people are at that casino right now?" he asks, pushing back the curtain. The sunrise is burning the sky orange. "I always thought it was just a night thing, for some reason, but it isn't even eight yet and the lot's half full."

"Yeah, but they could just be there from the night," Claude says, voice a little rough with sleep. "The slots don't stop." He's messing around on his phone, one of his socks on, the other sitting beside him on the bed like he'd gotten distracted. He hasn't shaved yet, and his forehead is still all scabbed up from the fight, and Sid wants him more than he's ever wanted anything in his life. As much as he wants hockey. Maybe even more.

The thought is staggering, and he has to turn away for a minute to compose himself. He stares out the window at the marquee sign on the casino, the lights snaking around in a circle. If he just stares at one of the blubs he can watch it blink on and off, ruining the illusion.

"We should do it," Sid say when he's sure that his voice will hold.

"I'm not going gambling," Claude says, still not looking up from his phone. "It's boring and the house always wins. Did I tell you about the time Luke took a roll of quarters down to the slots and—"

"No," Sid says. "We should get married."

Claude looks up then, and Sid watches his face lose color. "Oh shit, you're serious."

"Yes," Sid says. Maybe he should be on one knee for this, but it's not really how they roll.

"I have no idea why you would want to do that," Claude tells him. He's pale enough that Sid thinks he's going to bolt for a minute, even half-dressed and missing shoes, and curses himself for forgetting that Claude is a flight-risk given the right provocation.

"Why wouldn't I? You're the one who said yes," he points out, and then thinks that maybe bringing up the fiasco with the ring in the champagne might not be the smartest move.

Claude isn't distracted. "You've lost it," he says, standing up. "Completely lost it. Did you hit your head again?"

Sid rolls his eyes. "Marry me."

Claude seems to be caught in a loop of some sort. "I could be after your money, or—or writing a tell-all memoir."

"Yeah," Sid says, "but you're not. And my life's not that interesting."

Claude looks like he wants to start pulling on his hair. "Will you take this seriously? For one fucking minute?"

"I will if you stop trying to convince me to dump you."

"Your friends probably think I'm a bad influence." Claude's voice is growing louder as he goes. "And the media will hound you, and I'm no fucking good at commitment."

"I don't care," Sid says.

"I gave you chlamydia," Claude yells.

"I could have given _you_ chlamydia," Sid yells back. They stand there glaring at each other, and then Sid feels the corner of his lip start twitching. He raises a hand in front of his mouth, but can't quite muffle the sound that comes out of it.

"Are you—are you _laughing_?"

Claude looks flabbergasted, and that just makes Sid laugh harder, dropping his hand. Claude throws the sock on the bed at him, and Sid catches it against his chest.

"This is ridiculous," he says once he's caught his breath. "You're it for me, Claude, you absolute lunatic. After my concussions, I thought my life was over. But I got you out of it, somehow. I'm not saying I wouldn't go back and do it all over again if I could, but I'm not letting go of you just because you think you don't deserve it. "

"You shouldn't put everything you have into a person," Claude tells him. He looks sad, even caught in the light coming in through the window. "I can't be that for you. It never ends well."

"I'm not, and you don't have to be," Sid tells him. "I just can't keep living in the past. I have to move forward, and I want to do that with you."

Claude changes tactics. "You said it was too soon, after the restaurant. What's changed since then?"

Nothing, Sid thinks. Everything. It feels like time has warped somehow to lead them here. It's going on four years that he's known Claude—or a year and a half depending on how you count—but it feels like longer, somehow. Maybe because they've seen each other at their worst and helped each other survive it.

"This is… this is crazy," Claude says without giving Sid a chance to say any of that. "Isn't it? I mean I know I said yes the first time, but this is—  
this—"

"Have you changed your mind?" Sid asks.

There's a long pause, the breath of possibility hanging in the air between them. Claude looks at him, wide-eyed, hair burnished copper in the sunlight.

"No," he says quietly, and Sid tries not to show what that word does to him. "No, I haven't changed my mind. But there are other things to think of. The media. Your parents. Fuck, your _parents_."

"Claude," Sid interrupt. "All I care about is what you want, and we can figure the rest out later. I'm serious about this. About you. If you want to go down to the courthouse today, I'm there. Just say the word."

Claude nods. "I know. I know. I still think you're crazy, but just—let me think on it, okay?"

"Sure," Sid says. It's not the answer he'd been hoping for, but he gets it. He doesn't know all the pieces Claude is trying to put together, but he knows he can't rush him. Sid doesn't care about the media, or what his family is going to say, or if everyone thinks this is a mistake. He's disappointed enough people—they can take one more letdown. He's not willing to disappoint Claude.

"Hey," Claude says, fidgeting with the bedspread. "Don't think that this doesn't mean…"

"I know," Sid tells him, passing back his sock. "Take your time. I'll be here."

***

Maybe it should be weird between them after that, but it's not. Sid ends up wandering around the casino for a while until too many people start recognizing him, and then he spends a couple of hours looking at the shops. He finds a coffee mug with Number One Goalie superimposed over a pair of crossed sticks and buys it to give to Flower later.

Eventually he gets bored and sits down on a bench by the fountain. The water changes color, dancing as the lights paint it green and blue and purple, and the rushing noise helps clear Sid's head.

He thinks he gets what Claude had said about wanting to stop running—god, had it only been last week?—after he'd met Flower. He doesn't think he's been running, exactly, but he hasn't been facing everything, either—the Pens winning the Cup has made that clear. He doesn't want to be that person anymore, the one he'd been right after he'd left the NHL: bitter and despairing and selfish.

He'd thought he'd outgrown him, left him behind years ago, but maybe he'd only just learned how to live with him, internalized it all without dealing with it. He thinks he's ready to bury him now, though. He wants to be okay, whatever that looks like.

He's ready to try, anyway.

***

Sid's not exactly surprised to find Claude still in the room when he gets back, but the possibility that he'd be gone had crossed his mind.

"What am I supposed to wear to this thing?" Claude asks before the door is even closed. "Nice things? But not too nice? Why don't I have any nice clothes?"

"To…?" Sid asks, heart thumping unsteadily in his chest for a minute before Claude shoots him an exasperated look.

"To Marc-Andre's Cup day. The reason we drove all this way? The reason you made me drive in east coast traffic? That reason?"

Sid puts his hands up, trying not to feel the spike of disappointment. It's not like Claude was just going to change his mind in the time that Sid was gone. "It's not _really_ east coast traffic, but yeah. Wear whatever. It's going to be closed to the press, but people are still going to be there. Just don't wear your sweats, anything else is fair game, I think."

"Helpful," Claude grumbles as he unfolds the ironing board from the closet with a hideous screech of metal. "You want me to iron anything?"

"Sure, thanks," Sid says. "Let me figure out what I'm wearing."

"Better figure it out fast," Claude says as he unfolds the instructions to the iron. "Do not use iron on clothes while you're wearing them," he mutters. "No shit. Who writes these things, anyways?"

Sid digs out pants and a button-up that'd been at the bottom of his duffle, and sets them on Claude's side of the bed. He plugs the iron in when Claude passes him the cord, and it barely reaches where the ironing board is set up, which is just a bad hotel design.

Claude looks slightly frazzled, standing there trying to figure out which way to fold the accordion-like instructions back up, in mismatched socks, overdue for a haircut. Sid thinks that, if this is all he ever gets, he'd be okay with that.

Then Claude starts taking off his pants.

"Not that I don't appreciate the view," Sid says. "But what are you doing?"

"Look, if I want to wear that blue shirt I have, these are the only pants that go with it. Don't worry," he tells Sid, standing there in his underwear as he arranges the pants on the ironing board. "They're still clean, I washed them yesterday. Can you find my belt for me?"

"Sure," Sid says, and then he gooses him. Claude jerks so hard he pulls the cord for the iron right out of the wall.

"For fuck's sake—"

Sid gives up and laughs. "Like you wouldn't do it to me."

"I'm going to singe all your clothes," Claude says, brandishing the iron. "See if I don't." He follows up his threat by squirting water from the misting function at him, though, so Sid doesn't take him too seriously.

***

"You didn't propose to me just to one-up Marc-Andre, did you?" Claude asks. He's driving, attention firmly on the road. His tone is light, but Sid can hear an undercurrent of tension.

"No," he says honestly, watching the streets pass. "I just woke up and I realized I wanted to wake up next to you for the rest of my life."

"You're such a romantic," Claude says, but Sid can hear the smile in his voice. "Honestly, what happened to our murder-suicide pact? You promised."

"That only counts for PDA," Sid reminds him. "And I never promised."

By the time they hit Flower's house, all Sid's joking has turned to nerves. He watches the houses pass, one by one, and then Flower's driveway comes into view. Claude pulls in and puts the car in park, and Sid just sits there. Claude doesn't say anything, just waits next to him and doesn't take the keys out of the ignition.

"You don't have to do this, you know," Claude tells him, low, like someone could hear them. "Marc-Andre would understand if you can't come."

"No, I do," Sid says. "I want to," and it's true. If he can't have a Cup, he's glad his team can. He can hear laughter coming from the backyard and smell meat cooking on the grill, and he wants to be there. He unlatches the door, takes a deep breath, and steps out into Flower's Cup day.

They're late, so the party is already in swing when they walk around the side of the house. It's loud but not overly boisterous, and it's nice. Sid eats a couple of hot dogs, and rescues Claude from a conversation with someone who looks like they're related to Flower, and takes it all in. He finds himself smiling at the children streaking across the grass, playing in the sprinklers someone had set up.

He'd expected it to be bittersweet, even now, and it is in some regards. He stays away from the Cup sitting on its table under the pavilion by the cake, and he tries to get out of the conversations revolving around his own career when they pop up, but mostly… it's fun. He still feels a little out of place, but he's Flower's friend, even without the ties of brotherhood that wearing gold and black had afforded them.

He sits on the deck with a beer from the cooler and watches Claude touch the Cup, running his fingers across the silver plates, and something loosens in his chest, something that he's been carrying around for years.

"I told people to try to leave you alone," Flower tells him, sitting down next to Sid with his own beer. "Didn't want you stealing my spotlight."

Sid's not stupid enough to believe that this is anything other than a kindness. Part of him wants to prickle, say that he doesn't need special treatment, but it's true. If he can minimize how many people he has to talk to, reminders of what he's left behind, he'll do it.

"Thanks," he says, and clicks the necks of their bottles together.

They sit in companionable silence for a while, watching the rhythms of the party.

"Shouldn't you be out there?" Sid asks eventually. "It's your big day."

"Yeah," Flower says, but he stays there for a minute more before pushing himself up. "You want me to grab you a kebob while I'm up?"

It'd be easy to say yes and let the moment pass by, but Sid reaches out and grabs Flower's wrist before he can finish standing up. "Hey," he says. "I'm really happy for you. You deserve it."

Flower nods, and when Sid smiles up at him it's not forced at all. "I mean it," he says. "Now quit hiding from your hosting duties," and laughs when Flower flips him off as he's walking away.

***

By the time it begins raining, people have already started migrating over to the restaurant Flower had booked. There's a scramble to get the food in the house, but the Cup stays outside, safe under its anchored tent.

Claude's sleeping off a pain pill he'd taken an hour ago, Flower's in the kitchen helping Vero pack up the food, and the last of the guests are getting into their cars. The Keeper of the Cup is around somewhere, but Sid can't see him. The backyard is deserted, and there's something pulling Sid back outside.

He slips out the sliding door and through the rain to the tent. The table that had held the sheet cake is rumpled and covered with crumbs, but his attention is taken up by the table put in the place of prominence. The Cup's sitting on it, all gleaming silver and years of history, and maybe it should have been his, but life isn't made up of should-have's.

Sid steps closer until he can see the blurry outline of his body. He waits to see the reflective surface as malicious, watching him fail, but it's not like that. It's just a metal cup, but at the same time it's so much more. It represents everything Sid has ever wanted, all his hope and triumphs, all his long-lost dreams.

What happens to a dream deferred, he thinks, and reaches out. His hand hovers above the metal, the lettering of his team's names. And he's happy for them, he really is. Their victory feels so acutely sharp that it hurts to breathe around. But still, he'd wanted it for himself, not as a spectator to someone else's glory. This is why they play, isn't it? This is the dream.

He traces the air above the edge of the rim with his finger, a couple of inches above the surface. He wants to lift the Cup, feel its weight pressing him down, press his lips to the metal, fill it with champagne and drink, slopping the alcohol all over himself, choke on confetti, live live live.

He doesn't get any of those things, though. He could if he asked, maybe. Flower might help him reconstruct it, pour one out for Sid to drink, but Sid will know it's not real and never will be.

His hand hovers in the air, and he's unable to bring it down the last couple of inches and touch the Cup. He doesn't know why he can get out on the ice without any problems now, yet this is what's tripping him up. Maybe it's the finality, that all of his superstitions weren't enough to save him, and aren't enough to resurrect his career.

But he's lived too long in the shadow of his grief, too long looking back at the past, to allow this to define him anymore. There will always be a part of himself that wishes things had gone differently, that says he could have been something more than he ended up being, but as Claude always likes to remind him, his life isn't over. Hockey was a thing that was part of his life, but it wasn't his _life_.

Maybe this is how you let a dream go, he thinks: quietly and without fanfare. He touches the Cup and it feels simple. It's cool under his fingers, and he spreads his hand out across the metal, strokes up the base and runs a finger around the rim of the bowl, traces the stamped letters in the newest plate: Pittsburgh Penguins 2013-14.

His name might never be on it, but maybe that's okay. His life doesn't look like what he'd expected it to when he was eighteen, but he thinks most people's don't. And anyway, he's got time. He's twenty-six. Whatever comes next, he's got the rest of his life to figure it out.

***

By the time Sid makes it back inside, unlacing his shoes and carrying them with him so he won't track water everywhere, it's just him and Claude left. He can hear Flower talking to Vero upstairs, but the rest of the guests are gone.

Sid goes looking for Claude and finds him in the living room, asleep. He's curled into himself, stocking feet pressed against the arm of the couch, hands tucked between his knees. Sid feels a surge of protectiveness and can't help himself from sitting down next to him and running a light hand through his hair.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, but soon enough he hears footsteps on the stairs.

"Hey," Flower says, leaning over the back of the couch. "I'm heading out with the Cup. You're welcome to come if you'd like."

"I couldn't impose," Sid says, shaking his head.

"Sid," Flower says. "Don't be an idiot. It's no problem."

"I know," Sid replies. "But I think I'm going to stay here."

Flower looks over him and the way Claude has curled into him, and shrugs. "Don't feel like you need to be gone by the time we get back. And don't clean up, I've got it. I mean it," he says when Sid opens his mouth.

"Have fun," Sid says, pretending that's what he'd been going to say all along. "You've earned it."

It's quiet in the house, now that everyone's gone. The air conditions kicks on with a whine, and Claude makes an unhappy sound. Sid moves carefully and manages to contort himself enough to get the throw off the back of the couch. He drapes it over Claude as well as he's able, and then there's not much else to do.

The quiet feels peaceful, and for once there's nothing in his head telling him that he's doing this wrong. Sid looks at the picture hanging on the wall—Flower and his family nicely dressed, sitting by a fountain somewhere. They look happy, he thinks, and smiles. He can feel his eyes growing heavier, so he rests them, just for a minute.

The next thing he knows, he's somehow ended up lying down and the blanket that had been covering Claude is now draped over him. He lies there for a minute, listening to the sounds of movement, of someone picking up after the party. He should get up and help, he thinks, but the thought seems far away and swaddled in contentment.

"Thanks," he hears Claude say, and if he opens his eyes he can see him and Flower moving around each other in the light of the kitchen. Claude's tying off a trash bag, and Flower's doing the dishes, it sounds like.

Flower says something to him in French, and Claude replies in kind, but Sid close his eyes and lets their conversation wash over him without trying to figure out what they're saying.

He must fall asleep again, because the next thing he knows Flower is gone and Claude is there.

"C'mon, up," he hears, and opens his eyes to see Claude leaning over him. He hums a question and feels Claude brush his hair off his forehead.

"Babe," Claude says. "If you stay there you're going to hate yourself in the morning. Marc-Andre said we can have one of the guest rooms, and I've been assured it'll be much more comfortable."

"You never call me pet names," Sid mumbles, but he's sitting up now. The room is dark, all shadows except for the red light from the VCR.

"Do you like it?"

"Maybe," Sid says, and feels around the floor for wherever his shoes have gone.

"Dumpling."

Sid snorts. "Oh my god."

"Sugarlips. Bubble butt. Lover boy." Claude drawls the last one out, and it's too dark to see his expression, but Sid can imagine him wriggling his eyebrows.

"Stop," Sid says, trying to muffle his laughter. "You're going to make me wake Estelle up."

He finally manages to find his shoes, and stands up with them. Claude doesn't move back, and he's so close like this, Sid just wants to lean into him.

"I'm proud of you," Claude tells him, suddenly serious, and presses his lips against Sid's cheek, hard. "I'm so fucking proud."

"For what?" Sid asks, soft and a little lost.

"I know how easy it can be to stop living, to stop… making new dreams. How hard it can be to let old ones go. I'm glad you made it here, with me. I'm glad your stupid car broke down in my town."

Sid's shoes are in his hand, but he drops them on the couch. He reaches out for Claude in the dark, and Claude catches his hand. Sid presses his lips against his knuckles.

"I don't think I'd be here without you," he says, softly.

Claude laughs, just a puff of air. "You don't give yourself enough credit. I didn't do anything."

He's wrong, Sid thinks. He might not have battled Sid's depressive episodes or cured his concussion, but he did something.

"I love you," Sid tells him, because that's what it really comes down to.

"I know," Claude says. "Love you, too," and Sid presses his lips to Claude's knuckles again, just because he can.

They make their way to the guest room by the light from the moon, Sid running a hand against the wall as he goes, the other twined around Claude's. It would feel weird to have sex in Flower's house—and they're not supposed to yet, anyway—but he kisses and kisses Claude in the dark, the feel of his lips like some half-forgotten memory, the scent of his skin a homecoming.

***

The next morning comes fast, and Sid wants to stay but he's also ready to be gone. It's a strange combination, but acknowledging that doesn't make it make any different. He says goodbye to Vero, who's taking Estelle to visit her sister, and then it's just them and Flower.

"Don't be a stranger," Flower says, hands wrapped around the mug Sid had given him. He's standing on the porch in his robe and bare feet, the sun barely up. "You know where I live."

"Fuck that, you're coming to us next time," Claude says, pointing at Flower. "I hate driving on the east coast."

He shakes Flower's hand, then pulls him in halfway through, clapping him on the back. When Claude moves away, Sid takes his place.

"Thanks for inviting us," Sid tells him, and Flower hugs him. Sid can feel the heat from the coffee mug where it's pressed against his shoulder, but he doesn't complain.

"It's good to see you on your feet again," Flower says in Sid's ear, holding on tight. "If you don't come to see me again, I'm going to hunt you down and kick your ass."

"Yeah," Sid rasps, and then he makes himself let go.

He steps back, and this is harder than he thought it would be. Part of him wants to stay here like this forever, hanging out with his old teammates, making up for lost time, but he can't. His regrets still weigh on him, but maybe at some point you just have to start living and believe that the new memories you make together will be enough.

"Take care," Flower says, looking at both of them. He follows them down the wet sidewalk to the edge of the drive where they're parked. Sid catches a glimpse of his bare feet, so pale against the asphalt, and then he's in the passenger's seat, closing the door.

Sid watches Flower walk up the steps to the porch as Claude backs out of the drive. He rolls down the window and waves, and Flower raises his coffee mug in response, and then they're gone, pulling away from the house and down the still streets of the subdivision.

Home is such a strange concept, Sid thinks. It's not a place, really, because places change. But then again, so do people. So does time. Maybe home just something you _know_ , something ingrained so deep you can recognize it even when it's all changed, even when it looks nothing like you'd expect it to.

"So, what'd you think?" he asks when they're on the highway, Claude merging without using his turn signal.

"I'm glad we went," Claude tells him, and shrugs. "I mean, it was certainly eventful, but it was fun, meeting all your friends."

"You weren't too intimidated?" Sid asks, tipping his head to the side so he can watch Claude's profile, his capable hands on the wheel. "You know, since they were big-league NHL players and all?"

"Nah," Claude says. There's a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. "I know one of those, and he's kind of a loser."

Sid laughs. The peace from last night has dissipated, but he can still feel the shape of it. He turns on the radio, and there's a Gordon Lightfoot song playing, one his dad always used to listen to. The Ohio rolls out before them, the impossible suspension bridge taking them further away, and Sid starts humming along. He closes his eyes and feels the surface of the road change as they drive across the river.

***

They tool around the coast for a while, make one truly regrettable attempt at beach sex when their course of meds is through, and go hunting for shells. They're eating fast food in the car while the sky threatens rain when Sid tells Claude about the job offer he'd gotten, working with children at a hockey clinic

"In Vegas? Do they even have any ice rinks there?" Claude asks, finishing off his burger and sticking the wrapper in the bag. "How do you learn how to play hockey if you're in the desert?"

"Well, if I took the job I'd be helping teach them. And there's going to be an NHL team soon," Sid points out.

Claude snorts. "An expansion team? In Nevada? Never gonna happen."

"You're going to be eating those words in a couple of years," Sid declares, pointing his finger at Claude.

Claude throws a french fry at him in response.

"Not in my car," Sid protests, plucking the fry off the seat. "It'll leave grease marks."

"That'd be a shame," Claude says, straight-faced. "Then you might have to get rid of it."

Sid ignores Claude maligning his car, like he had the last dozen times or so. "So?" he asks, nervous despite himself. "What do you say? Want to follow me to Nevada?"

"Fuck yes," Claude says, grinning. "I've always wanted to see Vegas."

It's more complicated than that. There's logistics to consider—housing, and Claude still wants to have a way to support himself, and they both need to figure out if they want to finish their degrees. Sid doesn't think they'll stay after the season is done, thinks Claude will want to be closer to Danny and the boys in the long run, but that's a discussion for the future. Right now, they've got a couple of months to kill, and Sid thinks he can convince Claude to meet his parents if he plays his cards right.

Claude throws another fry at him, dragging him out of his thoughts, and Sid snags the container from his lap. There are just dregs left, and cold ones at that, so he dumps them out the open window and stuffs the cardboard in the bag.

"Hey," Claude protests. "I wasn't done with those."

"Well, it didn't look like you were eating them," Sid says, and Claude steals the last of his drink in retaliation while the seagulls squabble outside.

***

They go dancing. Or rather, Claude says he wants to go dancing and takes Sid with him. They end up at some hole-in-the-wall place, the kind where they don't even have craft beer, and eat greasy onion rings and get stared at by the locals.

There's not a dance floor, and Sid doesn't think this is the kind of place that would take kindly to two men dancing together, but Claude doesn't seem to care about that. He drags Sid outside after they've finished their beers and picks a corner of the mostly empty parking lot, the air muggy and close.

"Here," he says. "Put your hand on my shoulder, the other one in my hand."

"Why do you get to lead?" Sid asks, but he does as he's told.

"I'm taller," Claude lies outrageously. "Okay, like this…" and they start moving. He hums a song Sid doesn't recognize, something slow and sweet, and Sid follows as best he can.

It's all shadows and light, the shattered burnt-amber of a beer bottle crunching under their shoes. A car pulls in, the headlights sweeping over them and blinding Sid, but Claude just keeps humming, slightly off-pitch, and the beat stays steady.

The orbit each other outside the bar, the light and noise spilling out whenever the door swings open. "I thought you were supposed to be good at this," Sid murmurs as Claude steps on his foot again.

"I am," Claude says, his breath against Sid's ear, so close he shivers.

"Maybe I should lead," Sid says, voice lower than it normally is, and Claude steps back so they can get their limbs sorted out. There are giant moths battering themselves against the light they're standing under, and Sid is momentarily caught by the highlights in Claude's hair before he gets in position.

"Ready?" he asks, and Claude picks up the song again.

In the end, it turns out Claude is even worse at following.

***

"Knock-knock," Sid says.

"Do not make me laugh," Claude warns. "If you don't stop it I'm going to pee on your seats. Drive faster."

Sid doesn't think they're going to find anywhere Claude can go to the bathroom, seeing as the last town they'd passed had been half an hour ago and there's no sign of anything coming up soon, but he does as he's told.

"Hey, you know how to make antifreeze?" he asks. "You steal her blanket."

Claude huffs out an unwilling laugh, then clutches himself. "Fuck fuck fuck, pull over," he tells Sid, grabbing at the door handle. He's got his seatbelt undone and the car door open before they're even at a complete stop. Sid follows at a more leisurely pace.

The stretch of highway they're on isn't near any major cities, but it's also not deserted, and the land is flat for miles. Sid hopes Claude doesn't mind peeing in front of anyone who happens to be driving by them.

Sid leans against the passenger's side door and crosses his feet in front of him. "Hey, Claude. How do you make a fire with two sticks? You make sure one of them's a match."

"Sid, you fucking asshole," Claude says, dancing in place as he tries to undo his belt. "I'm going to piss myself."

"Not if you get your pants down," Sid says cheerfully. "Have you heard the one about John Wayne trying to go to the bathroom?"

Claude finally pushes his pants down enough to start peeing, and the noise he makes is almost pornographic. A semi blows by them and honks.

After an eternity, Claude zips back up and says, "I swear to god, the next time you need a bathroom break I'm making you pee out the window."

"I told you not to drink that Big Gulp, but you wouldn't listen," Sid tells him, and Claude flips him off.

"I was thirsty, you dick," he says, walking back to Sid. "I didn't realize we'd left civilization for good. Or that you were a _closet sadist._ "

Sid catches his face in his hands and kisses him, slow and sweet. "I love you," Sid tells him softly.

Claude laughs in face. "Nice try. You're still an asshole."

They drive for another twenty minutes before reaching a town, and Sid takes the exit and pulls into an old-fashioned diner for lunch. The outside doesn't look like much—faded paint and a bird's nest perched inside the R in Ruth's Diner—but Claude loves little places like this.

"I'll be back," Claude says when they're inside, tilting his head in the direction of the restrooms.

"You just went," Sid says. "Don't tell me you're not empty yet."

"I still have to wash my hands," Claude says, looking scandalized. "I'm not an animal."

He disappears towards the back, and Sid snags them a booth.

"Are you fellows ready to order? Can I get you anything to drink?" the waitress asks when she comes over.

"Hey, can I get two coffees, one black, one with room for cream and… do you guys do some kind of breakfast platter?" She rattles off the special. "Alright, and two of those, please," Sid says, and then goes through the process of picking out what kinds of toast and meat.

After she leaves, winking even though she's old enough to be Sid's grandmother, he goes back to studying the place. It's got worn yellow wallpaper and the edge of the table is chipped, but there are black and white photographs lining the walls in mostly-straight lines. He's staring at a picture of someone who could have been their waitress as a young woman when Claude returns.

"Hey," he says as Claude slides into the seat across from him. "I got you the breakfast platter."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but yes," Claude says.

"To the breakfast platter? It's not like you can say no, I already ordered for you. But you can probably catch the waitress…" Sid looks around to see if he can spot her, but the place looks like it's deserted except for a trucker in the corner, preoccupied with his omelet.

"I'm not taking your name," Claude continues, and it takes Sid a minute to catch on.

He whips around, eyes wide, to find Claude grinning at him, chin propped on his hand.

"That was incredibly satisfying," Claude says. "I can see why you sprung it on me like that the first time."

"Are you serious?" Sid asks. He's staring at Claude, and his heart is doing something funny in his chest.

"Yes. Let's elope. Oh god, Danny's going to kill me," Claude says, but he's laughing slightly, helplessly, as he does.

"We don't have to get married right this minute, if you don't want," Sid tells him, still reeling from the happiness rushing thorough him. "We could always wait."

Claude reaches across the table, making the salt and pepper shakers rattle, and shoves his shoulder. "Don't be an idiot," he says. "We're already going to Vegas. Why wait?" He sounds a little choked up, but Sid doesn't comment.

"We're getting married," he says, and Claude smiles at him, bright and perfect.

"Yeah. You realize this means we have, like, double dates for everything? Two first meetings, two first dates, two proposals. Well, maybe two and a half. This is going to be a nightmare."

"Hey," Sid protests. "That very first proposal wasn't me. It was like, a proposal by proxy or something."

"I mean, if that's how you want to play it," Claude says with a shrug.

"We don't have rings," Sid remembers suddenly. "Or… no, you probably don't need your birth certificate in Vegas, but all our clothes are wrinkled from being in the duffels. And since I'm Canadian and you're a dual citizen, then—"

"We'll figure it out," Claude tells him, grinning. "We've got half the country to figure it out."

"Not how you drive," Sid says, and now _he's_ tearing up.

"We can take the scenic route," Claude promises, and Sid leans across the too-wide table to kiss him. The edge jabs against his ribs, so he gets out and comes around to Claude's side, and they hold hands under the table and make out like teenagers while they wait for their food to come.

They're going to be in Nevada soon, dealing with all the mundane problems of living, but right now, right here, something clatters in the kitchen, and when their coffee come it's overdone and bitter. Claude's got a foot twined around Sid's, and the sky outside the window is so vibrantly blue that it almost hurts to look at, and Sid's happiness feels large enough to crack his chest open.

Lucky, he thinks. I'm so fucking lucky, and doesn’t protest too hard when Claude steals his last piece of bacon.


	3. Epilogue

**A DREAM DEFERRED [The Players' Tribune] August 21, 2016**

**Sidney Crosby / Contributor**

My husband loves poetry. He's got collections of Marianne Moore and T. S. Elliot and Philip Levine, and he'll read them to me—sometimes just a line or two, sometimes the entire piece. There's one poem in particular, "Harlem" by Langston Hughes, that stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it. You might recognize the first line: What happens to a dream deferred?

For me, the dream was always hockey, and in my case the dream wasn't so much deferred as obliterated. I'm sure I don't have to tell you about the hits, the concussions, the eventual retirement. I'll tell you this instead: I thought about staying.

If you followed the story, like it sometimes felt like half the world did, you'll know that there were raging debates about what I should do, how many concussions was too many, whether my health would suffer in the long run. My doctor estimated that with the right hit, that could be it for me—my career, my health, even my life.

In the end, it wasn't the thought of dying on the ice that decided it. It wasn't any of the advice my friends or family gave me, or even the urging of my doctor. It was that, if I got hit again, as I was surely going to, and if I got another concussion, which looked very likely, I didn't think I'd be able to survive it.

The time after my last concussion stretched endless and devastating, promising nothing but future pain. Depression weighed on me, crouched on my chest until I felt my bones creak under the weight. I couldn't get out of bed some days, couldn't get the energy to match my socks when they came out of the dryer, just wandered around in this gray haze, a gaping hole where my emotions should slot in.

And I told myself I could push through. Wasn't I strong enough? Hadn't I given enough? Hockey was all I'd wanted since I was a child. It was all I knew how to do. And I loved it, more than anything. The NHL didn't have the concussion protocols it has now, the ones that would have made that decision for me. I could have stayed.

But there would be another hit. And another concussion. And if I fell down that pit again, I didn't know if I would ever be able to get out.

And still, I second-guessed myself.

"Maybe it just sags / Like a heavy load" Hughes hypothesizes. That was me, in the beginning. It's like I had left something behind in CONSOL when I retired, something vital, tucked behind the boards or forgotten in the dressing room. I wondered if I'd made a mistake. I couldn't walk a straight line some days, I was so dizzy, but I craved it. The rush, the movement, the moment when you're right where you know you're supposed to be, doing something that feels more like destiny than anything you've ever felt before.

 _"Or does it explode?"_ It did for me, at least for a while. I imploded, I should say. I was so caught up in what I'd lost that I couldn't look past it, couldn't consider that there could be a life left for me outside of the rink. I couldn't listen to my friends or teammates or take the well-wishes of strangers. The thing that had defined me, the thing I had worked at for so many years, was gone. I didn't think there was anything left.

I was wrong.

I get told all the time, when people recognize me as the former face of the NHL, _You must miss it. We're so sorry. What a run._ In the end, all of their condolences boil down to one question: What happens to a dream deferred?

Here's what I've learned—it dies or it grows. There are some dreams that you can come back to, that you can fight for, that _should_ be fought for, but some you can't. Some have to be let go. If you'd told me at the beginning of my career that's how it was going to turn out, I'm not sure what I would have done, but it's true.

Despite all the energy and willpower we put into defining our own destinies, I've come to realize that life is also controlled by happenstance: a bad bounce, a chance meeting, a car running out of gas near a small town. And if our fate isn't set in stone, then the path of our lives can change.

There's a certain kind of freedom in that realization, that no matter how far think you've fallen, there's always tomorrow. There's always a possibility on the horizon.

There's always the chance to make new dreams.

Hockey is, and always will be a part of me, but that's not everything I am or want to be. I'm a husband and a son and a brother. A friend. A coach. A mentor. It's scary when the future deviates from the path you thought you'd take, but that's life. It changes and it grows, inexplicably, incredibly, and past all reason. 

So, who is Sid the Kid without hockey? Who is the number one draft pick of 2005 without the game that defined him? He's just a man. Just a man called Sid.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! As with the previous story, there is also a [playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL47mdscZ5in9JBgHkvtXkuxQukwLKnhYU). 
> 
> Come yell about things with me on [tumblr!](https://enter-remiges.tumblr.com/)


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